• Jury Ponders Penalty in Murder Case

Jury Ponders Penalty in Murder Case

LOS ANGELES, Apr. 21 – A Superior Court jury was locked up in a downtown hotel late today after deliberating briefly in the penalty phase of the murder retrial of Robert Kenneth Beausoleil.

The seven-woman, five-man jury deliberated 45 minutes at the end of the short penalty phase.

Jurors will resume deliberations today about 8:30 a.m.

The same jury convicted Beausoleil, 22, on Saturday of first-degree murder in the fatal stabbing last July 27 of musician Gary Hinman, 34.

The prosecution called no witnesses during the penalty phase.

Dep. Dist. Atty. Burton Katz introduced into evidence a letter written by Beausoleil linking him to the cult of Charles Manson.

Dep. Public Defender Leon Salter called one witness, Charles K. Beausoleil, the defendant’s father.

The elder Beausoleil simply read four other letters written by the defendant.

In his argument to the jury, Katz called Hinman’s murder a “vicious, brutal, remorseless, senseless killing,” bred of “greed, envy and hatred.”

The prosecution claimed Beausoleil stabbed Hinman in the chest when the musician refused to come up with $20,000 for the Manson “family.”

Beausoleil, during the early part of the trial, testified it was Manson, 35, who killed Hinman.

Manson and two others were indicted last week for the Hinman slaying.

The hippie chieftain and five of his followers also are charged with the slayings last August of actress Sharon Tate and six others.

In disdaining Beausoleil’s claim that Manson stabbed Hinman, Katz told the jury “Manson is innocent until proven guilty.”

At this point, Salter jumped up and asked for a mistrial.

The attorneys held a brief conference at the bench with Superior Judge William B. Keene.

The jurist apparently denied the motion because Katz resumed his argument.

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