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Bugliosi's Blueprint: How One Prosecutor Redrew Criminal Law
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Vincent Bugliosi faced an impossible task — convict Charles Manson for murders he never committed. The Tate-LaBianca trial became the most expensive in US history and permanently changed how America prosecutes conspiracy.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
What Vincent Bugliosi did inside a Los Angeles courtroom in nineteen seventy and nineteen seventy-one didn't just convict Charles Manson. It created the template for how America prosecutes the unthinkable.
To understand how Bugliosi made his case, you have to understand how the Manson Family actually operated. By nineteen sixty-nine, Charles Manson and his followers were living at Spahn Ranch, an abandoned movie set on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
On the night of August eighth into the ninth, nineteen sixty-nine, Manson sent Watson, Atkins, and Krenwinkel to a house on Cielo Drive in the Benedict Canyon area of Los Angeles. The house was rented by film director Roman Polanski and his wife, actress Sharon Tate.
When the Manson Family was eventually arrested and the investigation deepened, what emerged was a belief system that was disturbing in its internal logic. Manson had become obsessed with the Beatles' White Album, released in November nineteen sixty-eight.
Bugliosi's solution was the concept of conspiracy law used at a scale and in a way that hadn't been done before. He argued that Manson was the architect, the commander, the reason these murders happened.
The sentences never went further. In nineteen seventy-two, the California Supreme Court ruled the state's death penalty unconstitutional, and all five sentences were commuted to life in prison.
After the trial, Bugliosi wrote a book called "Helter Skelter," co-authored with Curt Gentry. It became one of the best-selling true crime books in history.
The broader consequence of August nineteen sixty-nine is something that's easier to state than to fully grasp. The Tate-LaBianca murders didn't just kill seven people.
Bugliosi's prosecution settled several things at once. It established legally that a cult leader could be held responsible for murders he didn't commit.
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