SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 29 — Manson Family member Leslie Van Houten Wednesday asked the California Supreme Court to overturn her murder conviction because the prosecution in her trial used gruesome photographs of crimes in which she did not participate.

Miss Van Houten’s attorney, Paul Fitzgerald, said he wanted the photographs to be attached to her petition for a new hearing, filed with the high court.

“The 34 grotesque and gruesome photographs of victims and scenes of crimes in which the petitioner both was and was not involved clearly were inflammatory and served no purpose other than to unnecessarily prejudice the jury against petitioner,” the petition said.

One juror, the brief noted, was so sickened by seeing three of the photographs, she was excused from the panel.

The state court of appeal Dec. 15 upheld Miss Van Houten’s conviction on two counts of first degree murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder in the grisly Tate-LaBianca slayings in Los Angeles in August, 1969.

Followers of Charles Manson killed five persons, including pregnant actress Sharon Tate. The next day, grocery executive Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary were murdered.

Fitzgerald said the supreme court should consider the “receipt into evidence of certain categories of grotesque, gruesome photographs of victims of crimes for which Miss Van Houten was not charged.”

The 34 photographs included pictures of the LaBiancas with knives protruding from their necks as well as the bloody bodies of Steven Parent, Abigail Folger, Voitcek Frykowski, Jay Sebring with a rope around his neck and the pregnant Miss Tate in panties and bra.

“Miss Van Houten asks that the exhibits be allowed to be attached to her petition as exhibits of unusual significance so that their highly inflammatory nature, in terms of content and overuse, will be clear,” Fitzgerald said.

Miss Van Houten was convicted in 1971 along with Manson, Patricia Krenwinkel
and Susan Atkins. All were given the death sentence, which was later invalidated by the supreme court. Each defendant filed a separate appeal.

Since Miss Van Houten’s attorney disappeared during the trial and she claimed her substitute counsel was incompetent, she was granted a new trial, which ended in a hung jury.

At the end of the third trial in 1978, she was found guilty of two counts of first degree murder in the LaBianca deaths and one count of conspiracy to commit first degree murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment.