LOS ANGELES, Dec. 25 – Charles M. Manson got what he wanted Wednesday when a judge reluctantly granted him permission to represent himself at his trial on multiple murder charges.

The short, slight, bearded leader of a hippie clan smiled happily when Superior Judge William B. Keene told him he could act as his own attorney.

But he was disappointed in his request to have two other lawyers act as his cocounsel. Keene told Manson, in effect, he had to do it alone or with a lawyer acting as his attorney.

Keene spent almost an hour trying to talk Manson out of representing himself. But Manson, accused of masterminding the Tate and LaBianca murders was adamant about not wanting a lawyer to handle his case.

“All my life I’ve been taking your advice,” said Manson, referring to judges who have presided at hearing for the 37 charges on which he has been arrested in his 35 years of life. “Your faces have changed, but you always put me in one place or another.

“All my life I’ve been put in little slots. I have no alternative but to fight you back. You’re all the same. You’re all on the same side. I have to fight you back.”

Keene stated:
“As a judge, I’m imploring you not to take this step. I’m doing everything I can to dissuade you.”

But Manson insisted.

Keene filially made a finding that Manson had intelligently waived his right to have a lawyer.

“It’s a sad and tragic step,” the judge said, “but I find you have a full and complete conception of the consequences of acting as your own attorney.”

Manson said he had gone only as far as the 5th grade — in reform school — and had received no formal education since.

But attorney Joseph A. Ball, who had been appointed by Keene to discuss the matter with Manson, told the court that he had found Manson to be “an able, intelligent, and quiet-spoken young man…he has a fine brain and a ready understanding of the law.”

A Supreme Court decision has suggested that a judge appoint a disinterested attorney to discuss the merits of self-representation so that a defendant choosing to defend himself can be adequately apprised of the risks he might be taking.

It is up to such an attorney to also tell the court his estimation of the man’s capabilities. Manson smiled broadly as Ball, a distinguished attorney who was formerly head of the State Bar Assn., told the court:

“Mr. Manson is a man with a fine brain, a good intellect.”

Keene told Manson that he did not want to order cocounsel because he did not want a group of men trying to decide on the conduct of the case as it unfolds. But he said Manson could have the advice of any attorneys with whom he wished to discuss matters as the case progresses.

Manson had unsuccessfully sought to have attorneys Luke McKissack and Lawrence Steinberg act as cocounsel with him.

“A blatant misstatement of the law” was the way McKissack later described. Judge Keene’s ruling against the request for cocounsel. “If you’re arrested you can have six lawyers,” McKissack said. “If you want to be your own attorney, you should be able to have another one.”

Having Manson act as his own attorney “will slow up the proceedings considerably,” said Dep. Dist. Atty. Vincent T. Bugliosi, one of the two prosecutors assigned the case. “But it will not affect the strategy of the prosecution.”

Manson was direct and at times brusque in speaking to Keene. “I respect your advice,” he told him at one point, “but I’ve been saying ‘yessir’ all my life, and I’ve spent most of the time in prison.

“I’ve seen the love and sincerity in your mind but not in the robe that you wear.”

He asked Keene if he would be the trial judge. Keene has assigned two of six codefendants in the Tate and LaBianca cases to a courtroom in which he will himself be presiding next year.

The Judge said any one of 134 superior court Judges in the county could try Manson. “Who does is not relevant, to use your term,” he said, “to whether you represent yourself. The only thing important is whether you get a fair trial.”

Manson was again bitter about pretrial publicity. When asked if he was aware of the possible penalty he faces — the gas chamber — he said: “Yes, I am, and I’m also aware I’m dead already. The papers have buried me already.”

A codefendant, Susan Denise Atkins, is reported to have sold her account of life with Manson’s band, and the deaths of which it is accused, for a lucrative sum. Manson explained one of the reasons why he wanted to have attorneys as cocounsel:

“I’m not acquainted with what happens in a courtroom, and how you go about selling your story to newspapers for money.”

When he tried to ask Keene about the court’s ruling against principals in the case making public statements, he referred to it as a “gag order.” Keene gave him a copy of it, but told him:

“There’s no reason now to discuss what you refer to as the gag order. Let’s take one thing at a time.”

Miss Atkins’ story was sold before the judge barred further statements. His order would presumably bar Manson from issuing any public statement on the case.

Manson, asked if he wished to plead, said he would like time to read the transcript of the grand jury inquiry which resulted in his being indicted. Keene ordered him to return to the same court — in which Judge George M. Dell will then be presiding — for a plea on Jan. 14.

The judge granted Manson all rights provided defendants handling their own defense, including use of the jail law library, a typewriter, a telephone, a legal runner to carry messages and supplies.

Manson explained that he believed he could do better as his own attorney because it would give him a chance to show the jury what sort of a person he really is.

“Mr. Manson feels if a jury hears his own words, it will feel that he didn’t do it,” Ball said.

Manson is accused of ordering members of his nomadic hippie band to kill five persons at the home of actress Sharon Tate as well as Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in two days of violent crimes in Los Angeles last August.

Twenty-six members of the Manson group were arrested on car theft charges in Inyo County’s Death Valley in October, including Manson.

By RON EINSTOSS and DIAL TORGERSON