• Defendant in Hinman Case Will Seek ‘New Evidence’

Defendant in Hinman Case Will Seek ‘New Evidence’

LOS ANGELES, May 28 – Robert Kenneth Beausoleil today had won the right to act as his own attorney to get “new evidence” aimed at clearing him in the murder of musician Gary Hinman.

Superior Court Judge William B. Keene gave the 22-year-old defendant until June 9 to bring in the new evidence.

Beausoleil claimed his attorney, deputy public defender Leon Salter, cannot obtain the evidence because members of Charles Manson’s hippy family will not speak to anyone belonging to the “Establishment.”

Beausoleil was convicted by a jury last April 18 of Hinman’s fatal stabbing. The jury recommended a gas chamber sentence.

Judge Keene took under submission until June 9 motions by Salter for a new trial and for reduction of the death penalty sentence.

As part of the newly discovered evidence, Salter presented to the court an affidavit purportedly signed by Mary Brunner, one of the prosecution’s star witnesses against Beausoleil.

In the affidavit, the person purported to be Miss Brunner claimed her testimony was false and that the prosecution and police “coerced” her into testifying by threatening to indict her for Hinman’s murder and by threatening to take her small child from her.

Miss Brunner, who was granted immunity from prosecution, testified Beausoleil stabbed Hinman to death last July 27 in the musician’s Topanga Canyon home.

Beausoleil testified in his own defense that Manson 35, committed the murder because Hinman 34, would not join the hippy cult.

Manson, Susan Denise Atkins 21, and Bruce Davis 27, also face trial for the Hinman slaying.

Manson, Miss Atkins and four others also are accused of the murders last August of Actress Sharon Tate and six others.

After hearing Salter’s motions, Judge Keene relieved him as attorney of record for Beausoleil.

The jurist granted Beausoleil’s motion to act as his own attorney for the “limited purpose” of gathering new evidence.

Beausoleil told Judge Keene he will obtain evidence to show that it was “impossible” for him to have killed Hinman and that the witnesses against him were “coerced.”

Of Miss Brunner, Beausoleil claimed, “She’d say anything to keep her baby.”

Judge Keene warned Beausoleil that his claims about new evidence better not be “delaying tactics.”

Although the young defendant said he cannot make “any guarantee,” he declared, “My life is at stake — I’m not playing games.”

Deputy Dist Atty. Burton Katz said he first learned of the affidavit Tuesday morning, and has not had a chance to check it out.

Even if it was signed by Miss Brunner, Katz said, the prosecution believes there was other testimony during the trial sufficient to convict Beausoleil.

Salter, in arguing for a reduction from the death penalty to life imprisonment, declared, “There is enough killing in this world.”

The deputy public defender said that whatever happened at the Hinman home, Beausoleil would not have been mixed up in it if he had not associated with Manson.

He said there is a “100% chance” of rehabilitating Beausoleil if he is sent to prison for life.

Katz called Beausoleil a “sociopath” who “manipulate other people.”

The young defendant, according to the prosecutor, has “transgressed not only by man’s law, but by God’s law.”

If Beausoleil had told his story to authorities when he was first arrested for the Hinman slaying, Charles Manson would have been in custody and Actress Sharon Tate and the other six victims “would be alive today,” Katz asserted.

The prosecutor told Judge Keene, “I ask you to stand by society’s verdict in this case — to wit, the death penalty.”

Beausoleil was first tried for Hinman’s murder in Santa Monica, but that jury deadlocked on a verdict in November.

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