Gavin Newsom backs down from a fight with the prison release of Leslie Van Houten | Opinion

There is a strong chance that Leslie Van Houten would have remained behind bars had Gov. Gavin Newsom made a more compelling case as to why she should have stayed there for the murders of Rosemary and Leno LaBianca. Instead, he worried that the 73-year-old Van Houten would kill again. That rationale ended up setting her free.

One of California’s most-watched parole cases will end in a quiet moment in the coming days, as Van Houten, once a member of the notorious Charles Manson Family cult, walks out of the California Institute for Women in Corona. Thanks to a Parole Board that recommended her release, and two of three appellate judges who agreed, she will be a free woman.

This is a very un-Newsomesque moment for the governor. He did not stick up for his convictions. He gave up. He was worried that he was going to lose. This from a governor who’s recently spent time campaigning for President Joe Biden in sure-loser states like Idaho and Arkansas. This from a former San Francisco mayor who legalized gay marriage in the city in 2004, which courts shot down just one month later.

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With Van Houten, Newsom ends up with contradictory moments of strictness and leniency.

In 1988, Californians gave the state governor the right to be their own parole board when it comes to reviewing the potential release of a murderer. First, the Board of Parole Hearings will conduct its official review. Then, the governor “may only affirm, modify or reverse the decision of the parole authority on the basis of the same factors which the parole authority is required to consider.”

Newsom bet the ranch on the factor of risk.

In his rejection of parole in June, Newsom said, “While I commend Ms. Van Houten for her efforts at rehabilitation and acknowledge her youth at the time of the crimes, I am concerned about her role in these killings and her potential for future violence.”

Van Houten’s attorneys quickly appealed the decision. A three-judge panel of the Second District Court of Appeals reviewed the governor’s rationale. And a majority could find no basis to sustain it.

“We review the governor’s decision under the highly deferential ‘some evidence’ standard, in which even a modicum of evidence is sufficient to uphold the reversal,” the ruling stated. “Even so, we hold on this record, there is no evidence to support the governor’s conclusions.”

There is another factor that Newsom could have emphasized, but curiously did not: the nature of the killing itself.

A factor that shows “parole unsuitability” is how “the commitment offense was committed in an especially heinous, atrocious or cruel manner.”

Van Houten’s risk of committing another crime has undoubtedly decreased over time. That she stabbed Rosemary LaBianca 14 times will never change. And neither will the anguish of family members. I reached out to Leno LaBianca’s daughter, Louise, for her thoughts on Newsom’s latest decision. She respectfully declined, writing “thank you for thinking of me.”

Nobody knows with absolute certainty how an Appellate Court would have ruled had Newsom rejected parole for Van Houten squarely on the basis of the savage crime and the voices of family members that speak to this day. The standard isn’t whether Newsom’s balancing was right. It was whether his rationale had evidence. Could the gruesome nature of the crime and the anguish it still causes somehow no longer be considered evidence?

Regardless, the governor could have taken the appellate court decision to the Supreme Court to make the case that his reasoning that Van Houten remained a risk was sound. But he did not.

“The governor is disappointed by the court of appeals’ decision to release Ms. Van Houten but will not pursue further action as efforts to further appeal are unlikely to succeed,” his office said on Saturday in a statement.

Newsom is settling for the status quo all of a sudden. For him, that is rare political territory.

Leslie Van Houten’s heinous murders stunned a world that struggled at the time to understand what happened to a 20-year-old woman who had been a high school cheerleader on the homecoming court. That her release has its own perplexing quality somehow brings this story full circle.

With one exception: The nightmare lives on for those in the LaBianca family whose lives were forever changed by an unspeakably violent night of August 9, 1969 in Los Angeles. That evidence is irrefutable.