Leslie Van Houten was convicted of taking part in the August 1969 murders of Leno LaBianca and Rosemary LaBianca in Los Angeles. She was 19 when the offenses were committed. Her first trial, in 1971, ended with convictions on two counts of first degree murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder, and with a death sentence. That judgment was reversed on appeal, a retrial ended with a deadlocked jury, and a third jury convicted her again in July 1978. She was sentenced to concurrent life sentences with the possibility of parole.
The case after the verdicts is largely a case about parole. Between 2016 and 2022 the Board of Parole Hearings found her suitable for release on five occasions, and each time the governor of California reversed the decision. In May 2023 the Second District Court of Appeal ruled, by a vote of 2 to 1, that the governor's most recent challenge to the 2020 grant had no evidentiary support. She was released to parole supervision on July 11, 2023, after more than fifty years in custody. She was tried together with Charles Manson and other co-defendants. The Tate case, a separate matter, concerned the previous night; her murder convictions are for the LaBianca deaths only.
Leno LaBianca and Rosemary LaBianca died in Los Angeles in August 1969. The case was prosecuted in Los Angeles County, and Van Houten was one of several defendants. She was indicted on two of the seven murder counts and on a conspiracy count. The defendants were tried jointly, and they included Manson.
The jury found all of the defendants guilty as charged and found the murders to be of the first degree. The Court of Appeal summarized her conviction in the words: "A jury convicted Van Houten in 1971 of two counts of first degree murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder." After the penalty phase, in the court's words, "the same jury imposed death sentences upon all defendants."
In 1972 the California Supreme Court decided People v. Anderson (6 Cal.3d 628), "invalidating the death penalty," in the words of the Court of Appeal. The appeals of Van Houten and her co-defendants were transferred to the Court of Appeal following that decision, and her death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. When the state later restored capital punishment, the change did not apply retroactively, so it did not reach her.
On August 13, 1976, in People v. Manson, the Court of Appeal "reversed the judgment of conviction of appellant Van Houten and affirmed the judgments as to the other defendants." The ground, as the court summarized it in 2023, was that "Van Houten's attorney had disappeared during the trial." The remittitur was filed on December 10, 1976.
She was retried in 1977 and the jury "was hopelessly deadlocked," in the words of the Court of Appeal's 1980 opinion, so that a mistrial was declared. She was released on bail while the case was pending a further trial. A third trial followed in 1978.
On July 5, 1978, the jury returned its verdict. In the 1980 opinion she was "found guilty as charged of two counts of first degree murder" in the LaBianca case and "guilty of conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree." The trial court "ordered her imprisoned in the state prison for the term of life," with the counts running concurrently, and gave her credit for eight years and twenty days in custody. The 2023 opinion summarizes the result in the words "concurrent life sentences with the possibility of parole." Her bail was revoked after the verdict and she was returned to custody.
On December 15, 1980, the Court of Appeal decided People v. Van Houten. It held that the trial court had properly discharged a juror for good cause, applied its own earlier ruling on the admission of evidence, rejected a claim of prosecutorial misconduct, and rejected a claim that her counsel had been ineffective, holding that counsel's choices were tactical. Its conclusion reads: "The judgment is affirmed, and the petition for writ of habeas corpus is denied."
After a parole denial in 2000, a trial court granted her habeas relief, but the Fourth District Court of Appeal reversed in In re Van Houten (2004) 116 Cal.App.4th 339. The board found her suitable for parole in 2016, 2017 and 2019. Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. reversed the 2016 grant and the grant of September 6, 2017, the latter on January 19, 2018. The board found her suitable again on January 30, 2019, and Governor Gavin Newsom reversed that grant on June 3, 2019, writing that "she currently poses an unreasonable danger to society if released from prison at this time." The board cited her youth at the time of the offenses, her lack of prior criminal history, and decades of programming and positive conduct.
She challenged the 2019 reversal. On September 20, 2019, the Second District Court of Appeal denied her petition in an unpublished opinion, holding that the governor's conclusion that she had not fully accepted responsibility for her role, and remained a threat to public safety, was supported by "some evidence." One justice dissented. The disposition reads: "The petition for a writ of habeas corpus is denied."
The board found her suitable for a fourth time on July 23, 2020. On November 27, 2020, the governor issued a written decision reversing that grant, the fourth gubernatorial reversal. The superior court denied her petition for habeas corpus. In November 2021 the board recommended parole a fifth time, and in March 2022 the governor again blocked her release.
In re Van Houten, No. B320098, was filed on May 30, 2023, and certified for publication. By a 2 to 1 vote, a panel of the Second District Court of Appeal, Division One, held that under the deferential "some evidence" standard there was "no evidence to support the Governor's conclusions." The majority found that the governor's concerns about her insight and candor were unsupported and that her historical risk factors, given her extensive rehabilitation, did not show that she was currently dangerous. It wrote that "the Governor's refusal to accept Van Houten's explanation amounts to unsupported intuition," and that she had shown "extraordinary rehabilitative efforts, insight, remorse, realistic parole plans."
The disposition reads: "The petition for writ of habeas corpus is granted. The Governor's decision reversing the Board of Parole Hearings' July 2020 decision is vacated. The grant of parole is reinstated," and "the Board of Parole Hearings is directed to conduct its usual proceedings for a release on parole." The presiding justice dissented, taking the view that there was some evidence that she minimized her role in the offenses and that the record was not meaningfully different from the one before the court in 2019.
After the ruling her attorney said the governor could ask the Attorney General to seek review in the California Supreme Court. In the first week of July 2023 the governor's spokesperson said that he was disappointed by the decision but "will not pursue further action," because "efforts to further appeal are unlikely to succeed." She added that "the California Supreme Court accepts appeals in very few cases."
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said that Van Houten "was released to parole supervision" on Tuesday, July 11, 2023, after 53 years in custody. She went to live in California under parole supervision. The department said she "will have a three-year maximum parole term with a parole discharge review occurring after one year." She was 73. She had worked as a tutor and had earned a master's degree during her sentence.
Her sentence of life with the possibility of parole left release to the Board of Parole Hearings, whose grants the governor reversed five times. A court reviewing a governor's reversal applies the "some evidence" standard, which the 2023 majority described as deferential to the governor. In her case that standard was applied differently by two panels of the same appellate district within four years: the 2019 panel held that the governor's conclusion that she had not fully accepted responsibility was supported by some evidence, and the 2023 panel held that the evidence did not support his conclusions.
The death sentences that the 1971 jury imposed were overtaken in 1972 by the California Supreme Court's decision in People v. Anderson, which invalidated the death penalty. Her later convictions in 1978 carried no death sentence.
The central dispute in the later record was over insight and responsibility. In 2019 the Court of Appeal accepted the governor's finding that she had not fully accepted responsibility, with one justice dissenting. In March 2022 the governor wrote that, given the extreme nature of the offenses in which she was involved, he did not believe she had sufficiently demonstrated that she understood the factors behind her participation. In 2023 the majority of another panel held that none of this had evidentiary support, and the dissent maintained that there was some evidence that she minimized her role.
August 1969: the deaths of Leno LaBianca and Rosemary LaBianca in Los Angeles.
1971: Van Houten is convicted with co-defendants of two counts of first degree murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder; the jury imposes death sentences.
1972: the California Supreme Court decides People v. Anderson, invalidating the death penalty; her death sentence is commuted to life imprisonment.
August 13, 1976: the Court of Appeal reverses the judgment as to Van Houten.
December 10, 1976: the remittitur is filed.
1977: retrial; the jury is deadlocked and a mistrial is declared.
July 5, 1978: a third jury convicts her of two counts of first degree murder; concurrent life sentences with the possibility of parole follow.
December 15, 1980: the Court of Appeal affirms the judgment in People v. Van Houten.
2016: the board finds her suitable for parole; the governor reverses.
September 6, 2017: second grant; reversed January 19, 2018.
January 30, 2019: third grant; reversed June 3, 2019.
September 20, 2019: the Court of Appeal denies her habeas petition, one justice dissenting.
July 23, 2020: fourth grant; reversed November 27, 2020.
November 2021: fifth grant; reversed in March 2022.
May 30, 2023: the Second District Court of Appeal grants her petition 2 to 1 and reinstates the July 2020 grant.
July 2023: the governor announces he will not pursue further action.
July 11, 2023: released to parole supervision.