A just denial

The word “compassion” seems misplaced in a discussion about a person who stabbed a pregnant woman to death and then used her blood to scrawl “pig” on the front door of the victim’s home.

Yet compassion is what Susan Atkins’ lawyer, who is also her husband, pleaded for when he spoke to a California parole board last week.

Atkins was convicted, along with Manson and three others, of the Los Angeles murders infamously chronicled in the book “Helter Skelter,” co-written by Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted the killers.

Atkins and the others were sentenced to die in California’s gas chamber, but their sentences were commuted to life in prison, with the possibility of parole, when California’s Supreme Court temporarily banned capital punishment in 1972.

In the ensuing 37 years Atkins, who’s 61, has requested parole, and been denied it, more than 10 times.

Last week’s hearing was different, though. Atkins, who has brain cancer, was wheeled into the hearing on a gurney. She slept through most of the proceedings, and doctors don’t expect she will live much longer.

Her husband/lawyer pointed out that California, which is nearly bankrupt, is spending thousands of dollars per month to care for Atkins.

That seems a fair price to ensure that Atkins is punished to the fullest extent legally possible. After all, a jury of her peers concluded that she deserved to die, not to spend 40 years in prison, during which time she married twice, wrote a book and earned a college degree.

Most importantly, she has had 40 years of life, an incalculably precious thing which she stole, in the most savage way imaginable, from her victims.