LOS ANGELES, Mar. 24 – Five members of Charles Manson’s hippie “family,” in a surprise move Tuesday, pleaded “no contest” to conspiring to prevent one of the cult leader’s former followers from testifying in the Tate-LaBianca trial.

The legal effect of such a plea is the same as a plea of guilty.

Catherine (Gypsy) Share, Lynnette (Squeaky) Fromme, Ruth Ann (Ouish) Morehouse, Steve (Clem) Grogan and Dennis Rice withdrew their previous pleas of innocent, after the selection of a jury to try them was under way.

All were accused of plotting to dissuade Barbara Hoyt, 19, from appearing as a prosecution witness against Manson and three others whose penalty trial now is nearing an end in another courtroom.

Superior Judge Stephen R. Strothers, who on Monday rejected a motion for dismissal on a defense claim that the defendants were being denied a speedy trial, set April 13 for sentencing.

He declared the charge of conspiracy to willfully and unlawfully prevent a person from testifying to be a misdemeanor which is punishable by up to one year in county jail.

Dep. Dist. Atty. Loren Sutton contended that Miss Hoyt went to Hawaii last fall at the urging of the defendants and that after arriving there was given an LSD-laced hamburger by Miss Morehouse, who accompanied her.

After her release from the psychiatric ward of a Honolulu hospital, the alleged victim returned to Los Angeles and testified for the prosecution at the Tate-LaBianca trial.

Charges of assault to commit murder and assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily harm, both also included as objects of the conspiracy at the time of the indictment, previously were dismissed by another judge.