The Law: Sermon on Society

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SOMETIMES in tears, sometimes in anger, most often with restrained sincerity, Charles Manson told his story to the court. Excerpts from his testimony:

"I have stayed in jail and I have stayed stupid, and I have stayed a child while I have watched your world grow up, and then I look at the things that you do and I don't understand. Most of the people at the ranch that you call the family were just people that you did not want, people that were alongside the road; I took them up on my garbage dump and I told them this: that in love there is no wrong.

"I have done my best to get along in your world, and now you want to kill me. I say to myself, 'Ha, I'm already dead, have been all my life.' I may have implied that I may have been

Jesus Christ, but I haven't decided yet what I am or who I am. But what you want is a fiend; you want a sadistic fiend because that is what you are. You only reflect on me what you are inside of yourselves, be cause I don't care anything about any of you. If I could, I would jerk this microphone off and beat your brains out with it, because that is what you deserve. You kill things better than you, and what can I say to you that you don't already know? "I don't care what you do with me. I have always been in your cell. When you were out riding your bicycle, I was sitting in your cell looking out the window and looking at pictures in magazines and wishing I could go to high school and go to the prom. My peace is in the desert or in the jail cell, and had I not seen the sunshine in the desert, I would be satisfied with the jail cell much more over your society."