If Charles Manson somehow managed to get himself released from prison, would he be your choice of an inspirational speaker? A freak show, perhaps, but getting past the fact that he’s the poster boy for the absolute worst of schizophrenia and paranoid delusions. He’s not the guy you would invite to dinner, even if you could.

But Manson has the experience to tell you about prison, about being sentenced to death, about many of the issues that confront society. It’s not that he lacks the knowledge and experience to offer insight. It’s that he’s a psycho killer.

So what makes Donna Hylton a wise choice for a person to speak to hundreds of thousands of women at their march? At Fault Lines, Matt Brown tries to thread the needle of what someone like Hylton has to offer despite what she did. The “what she did” part needs to be said.

Vigliarole [the victim] believed the three girls were prostitutes who were going to have sexwith him. Instead, they picked him up on March 8 in Elmhurst, Queens, at Maria’s home, and drugged him to make him drowsy. Then they drove him to Selma’s apartment in Harlem. The apartment had already been prepared for an extended torture session: The closet door had been cut, a pot put in it for use as a toilet, the windows boarded. For the next 15 to 20 days (police aren’t sure just when Vigliarole died), the man was starved, burned, beaten, and tortured. (Even 10 years later, Spurling could recall Rita’s chilling response when they questioned her about shoving a three-foot metal bar up Vigliarole’s rear: “He was a homo anyway.” How did she know? “When I stuck the bar up his rectum he wiggled.”) The three girls took turns watching the man. It was Donna who delivered a ransom note and tape to a friend of Vigliarole’s, who was able to get a partial license plate number of the car she was driving. He notified the police, who traced the plate to a rental car facility. On April 6 the suspects were arrested, and detectives spent 36 hours straight interviewing the seven men and women. “We had to keep going back and forth and catch them in lies,” said Spurling. “It was a never-ending circle of lies.” Spurling himself interviewed Donna: “I couldn’t believe this girl who was so intelligent and nice-looking could be so unemotional about what she was telling me she and her friends had done. They’d squeezed the victim’s testicles with a pair of pliers, beat him, burned him.

Hylton was sentenced to 25 years, and served 27 years in prison at Bedford Hills. She was sentenced by Judge Edwin Torres, a former criminal defense lawyer who turned hard-ass on the bench. That happens more than you realize. The minimum sentence for the A1 felony of Second Degree Murder was 15 years to life. Torres hit her with another extra ten, the maximum sentence possible.*

There were mitigating factors as well. She claimed she suffered abuse as a child, including sexual molestation by her adoptive father. She wasn’t the mastermind of the crime. She did it for a promise of $9,000, which she wanted to get a modeling portfolio, a factor that could cut either way.

Since her release, Hylton has become a self-styled advocate for women’s rights and prison reform, and was chosen to speak at the Women’s March because of these attributes.

As Hylton very clearly explains on her website, she’s a women’s rights activist and criminal justice reform advocate. She is a woman. She is black. She was also the victim of abuse as a child and spent a long time in prison after committing a heinous crime. Hylton’s life experiences are relevant to her causes. A white guy who’s never been to prison might be able to give a great talk about violence against women and inequality, but there’s an understandable draw to hearing about violence and discrimination against women from someone who’s experienced both. There’s an understandable draw to hearing about what happens to black women in the criminal justice system from a black woman who’s been through the criminal justice system. Hylton’s background doesn’t make her positions are any more valid, but even if her conclusions based on her life experiences are dead wrong, her perspective is colored by a very unique and very germane set of life experiences. Her views are worth hearing.

Everything Matt says is undeniably accurate, up to the last sentence of that paragraph:

Her views are worth hearing.

It’s not that her views are unworthy of hearing. If we’re to learn of the experience of someone who has spent 27 years in prison, there is one thing that should be recognized: they’re likely to have done something pretty awful. But then, there’s always a drug conviction, which could produce a sentence as long as, if not longer than, murder and torture, and the wrongfully convicted.

Hylton may well have the experiences, combined with the intelligence and capacity to speak, that make her a desirable person to put on the dais before a lot of people. But Hylton may also be a psychopath given her total lack of empathy when she was involved in the torture and murder of another human being.

Why Hylton? Was there no other person with her experiences who could stand in front of a sea of pink hats to inspire the crowd? No other woman? No other black woman?

Matt’s purpose was not to be an apologist for Hylton’s horrific crime, nor to extol her virtue as an inspirational speaker. He challenged the knee-jerk, simplistic reaction that her very availability and desire to speak to women’s issues and prison reform was an affront to the righteous folks who demand her execution.

Like Matt, I would have defended Hylton in court, fought the death penalty had it been a possibility (it wasn’t), and fought for her release after she completed her sentence. That some feel Hylton should never have been released, should have been executed, doesn’t concern me. They are allowed to be outraged. What she did was outrage-worthy, and while reasonable minds may differ as to whether she deserved to be released, the decision has been made. They can disagree with it all they want.

But to put her on the podium at the Women’s March as a person to whom others should look for inspiration? That’s a different matter. Torturing and murdering a human being is not the path to the top of the pedestal. There are others far more deserving of attention. There are few far less deserving of attention than Donna Hylton.

Donna Hylton should be thankful that she’s no longer in Bedford Hills and live a life of quiet desperation. The decision to make her a speaker at the Women’s March was a terrible one. She was not worthy.

*Under New York Penal Law §125.25, Murder in the Second Degree is an A-1 felony and carried a sentencing range of a minimum of 15 to life to a maximum of 25 to life.