hairs had been found on the discarded clothing the killers wore the night of the Tate murders. Shown them, Winifred Chapman told me they looked like the hair of Sharon’s dog. When I requested that they be brought over from LAPD, however, I got only excuses. Finally, I learned that while walking across the street to the Hall of Justice, one of the Tate detectives had dropped and broken the vial containing the hairs. He had been able to recover only one. Realizing that the expression “grasping at hairs” would be all too appropriate in this case, I decided against introducing that single hair into evidence.
At 4:27 P.M. that Monday—exactly twenty-two weeks after the start of the trial, and two days short of a year after my assignment to the case—I told the Court: “Your Honor, the People of the State of California rest.”
Court was recessed until Thursday, November 19, at which time each of the defense attorneys argued the standard motions to dismiss.
Back in December 1969 a great many attorneys predicted that when we reached this point Manson would have to be acquitted because of insufficiency of evidence.
I doubted if any lawyer in the country felt that way now, including the attorneys for the defense.
Older denied all the motions.
THE COURT “Are you ready to proceed with the defense?”
FITZGERALD “Yes, Your Honor.”
THE COURT “You may call your first witness, Mr. Fitzgerald.”
FITZGERALD “Thank you, Your Honor. The defendants rest.”
Nearly everyone in the courtroom was caught completely off guard. For several seconds even Judge Older seemed too stunned to speak. The ultimate legal issue at a criminal trial is not the defendant’s guilt or innocence, as most people believe. The issue is whether or not the prosecution has met its legal burden of proving the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty.[76] The defense obviously, but unexpectedly, had decided to avoid cross-examination and to rely on the argument that we hadn’t proved the guilt of Manson and his co-defendants beyond a reasonable doubt and, hence, they were entitled to not-guilty verdicts.
The biggest surprise, however, was still to come.
PART 7
“Snitches, and other enemies, will be taken care of.”
“Before his disappearance, Ronald Hughes, the missing defense attorney in the Tate-LaBianca murder trial, confided to close friends that he was in fear of Manson.”
NOVEMBER 19–DECEMBER 20, 1970
Fitzgerald said the defense had rested. But the three female defendants now shouted that they wanted to testify.
Calling counsel into chambers, Judge Older demanded to know exactly what was going on.
There had been a split between the defense attorneys and their clients, Fitzgerald said. The girls wanted to testify; their attorneys opposed this, and wanted to rest their case.
Only after an hour of intense discussion did the real reason for the split come out, in an off-record admission by Fitzgerald:
Sadie, Katie, and Leslie wanted to take the stand and testify that they had planned and committed the murders—and that Manson was not involved!
Charlie had tried to explode his bombshell, but the attorneys for the girls had managed to defuse it, at least temporarily. Standing up against Manson for the first time, Ronald Hughes observed: “I refuse to take part in any proceeding where I am forced to push a client out the window.”
The legal problems thus created were immense, but basically they came down to the question of which took precedence: the right to effective counsel or the right to testify. Worried that whichever course Older took might be reversible error on appeal, I suggested he take the matter to the State Supreme Court for a decision. Older, however, decided that even though the attorneys had rested, and had advised their clients not to take the stand, the right to testify “supersedes any and all other rights.” The girls would be permitted to take the stand.
Older asked Manson if he also wished to testify. “No,” he replied, then, after a moment’s hesitation, added, “That is, not at this time anyway.”
On returning to open court, Kanarek made a motion to sever Manson so he could be tried separately.
Charlie was now attempting to abandon ship, while letting the girls sink. After denying the motion, Older had the jury brought in and Susan Atkins took the stand and was sworn. Daye Shinn, however, refused to question her, stating that if he asked the questions she’d prepared, they would incriminate her. [77]
This created a whole new problem. Returning to chambers, Older remarked: “It is becoming perfectly clear that this entire maneuver by the defense is simply one…to wreck the trial…I do not intend to permit this to happen.”
Still in chambers, and outside the presence of the jury, Susan Atkins told Judge Older that she wanted to testify to “the way it happened. The way I
THE COURT “You are subjecting yourself to the extreme risk of convicting yourself out of your own mouth, do you understand that?”
ATKINS “I understand that.” She added that if she was convicted, “let them convict me on the truth. I do not wish to be convicted on a pack of lies taken out of context and just scattered every which way. Because, Mr. Bugliosi, your foundation is just crumbling. I have watched it crumble. You have been a sly, sneaky fox.”
BUGLIOSI “Why do you want to put it back together for me, Sadie, if it is crumbling? You should be happy. You can go back to Barker Ranch if it is crumbling. Why do you want to take the stand to help me?”
Shinn said he would ask to be relieved as counsel if Older ordered him to question his client. Fitzgerald replied similarly, adding, “As far as I am concerned, it would be sort of aiding and abetting a suicide.”
The matter was unresolved when court recessed for the day.
