The State - News from Aug. 17, 1988

The murder-conspiracy conviction of former Peoples Temple cult member Larry Layton in the 1978 death of Rep. Leo Ryan was upheld by a federal appeals court in San Francisco. Layton, 42, is currently at Terminal Island Federal Prison serving a life term for Ryan’s killing. Layton was never accused of the actual shooting of Ryan. However, he was considered part of a conspiracy concocted by Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones to get rid of dissenters and silence critics. Layton’s attorney, Robert Bryan, said he will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. He contended that there was “overwhelming” evidence that Layton was brainwashed. Layton was the only member of the sect convicted in the death of Ryan during the California congressman’s fact-finding mission to the cult’s Guyana jungle outpost. Jones and 912 of his followers later died in a mass suicide-murder.