Judges Refuse To Bar Extradition Of Watson
Tuesday, September 1st, 1970
NEW ORLEANS, LA, Sept. 1 – A three-member panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has refused to block the extradition of Charles “Tex” Watson to California to stand trial in the Sharon Tate murders.
The appellate court’s action Monday cannot result in Watson’s being immediately shipped from a McKinney, Tex., jail to California, but it left his lawyer with only two more ways to turn.
Watson has been in jail in McKinney since last Nov. 30 and his lawyer, Bill Boyd, has been trying to keep him in Texas on the ground that he cannot get a fair trial in California because of widespread publicity.
Boyd said that since only a three-judge panel acted Monday he will petition for a rehearing before the whole appellate court. If he is denied that, his last chance to keep Watson out of California is the U.S. Supreme Court.
Linda Kasabian, who turned state’s evidence in the Los Angeles trial of the Charles Manson “family” testified that Watson, 24, committed six of the seven murders that figure in the trial.
Susan Atkins, 21, a co-defendant, told a grand jury that Watson killed five persons at the Tate home and she had been told he killed either Leno LaBianca or his wife the following night.
In legal terms, what the three-judge appellate court panel did Monday, was to uphold a lower court’s ruling denying Watson a writ of habeas corpus.
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