Caryl Chessman
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Caryl Whittier Chessman (May 27, 1921 in St. Joseph, Michigan, – May 2, 1960 at San Quentin Prison) was a convicted robber and rapist who gained fame as a death row inmate in California. Chessman's case attracted world-wide attention, and as a result he became a cause célèbre for the movement to ban capital punishment.
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[edit] Crime and Conviction
Chessman was a criminal with a long record who had spent most of his adult life behind bars. He had been paroled a short time from prison in California when he was arrested near Los Angeles and charged with being the notorious "Red Light Bandit." The "Bandit" would follow people in their cars to secluded areas and flash a red light that tricked them into thinking he was a police officer. When they opened their windows or exited the vehicle, he would rob and, in the case of several young women, rape them. In July, 1948, Chessman was convicted on seventeen counts of robbery, kidnapping and rape and condemned to death.
Part of the controversy surrounding the Chessman case stems from how the death penalty was applied. At the time, under California's version of the "Little Lindbergh Law", any crime that involved kidnapping with bodily harm could be considered a capital offense. Two of the counts against Chessman alleged that he dragged a woman a short distance from her car before raping her. Despite the short distance the woman was moved, the court considered it sufficient to qualify as kidnapping, thus making Chessman eligible for the death penalty.
[edit] Legal Appeals
Acting as his own attorney, Chessman vigorously asserted his innocence from the outset, arguing throughout the trial and the appeals process that he was alternately the victim of mistaken identity, or a much larger conspiracy seeking to frame him for a crime he did not commit. He claimed at other times to know who the real culprit was, but refused to name him. He further alleged that statements he made during his initial police interrogation implicating him in the Red Light Bandit crimes were coerced through torture.
Over the course of the twelve years he spent on death row, Chessman filed dozens of appeals and managed to successfully avoid eight execution deadlines, often by mere hours. He appealed his conviction primarily on the grounds that the original trial was improperly conducted and that subsequent appeals were seriously hampered by incomplete and incorrect transcripts of the original trial proceedings. The appeals were successful and the U.S. Supreme Court finally ordered the State of California to either conduct a full review of the transcripts or release Chessman. The review concluded that the transcripts were substantially accurate and Chessman was scheduled to die in February, 1960.
The Chessman affair put then-governor of California, Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, an opponent of the death penalty, in a difficult situation. Brown initially did not intervene in the case, but then issued a last-minute, 60-day stay of execution on February 19, 1960, just hours before Chessman's scheduled execution. Brown claimed he issued to the stay out of concern that Chessman's execution could threaten the safety of President Dwight D. Eisenhower during a planned visit to South America, where the Chessman case had inflamed anti-American sentiment.
[edit] Literary Appeals
Chessman was an exceptionally charismatic and intelligent individual who eloquently argued his case in the court of public opinion through letters, essays and books. While on death row, he wrote four books. In Cell 2455, Death Row, he clearly implies he once killed a man, though he was never prosecuted or convicted for this. Chessman's memoirs became bestsellers and ignited a world-wide movement to spare his life, while focusing attention on the politics of the death penalty in the United States at a time when most Western countries had already abandoned it, or were in the process of doing so. Brown's offices were flooded with appeals for clemency from noted authors and intellectuals from around the world, including Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury, Norman Mailer and Robert Frost.
In addition to giving him world-wide notoriety, the books earned Chessman hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties.
[edit] Execution
Brown's stay of execution, along with Chessman's last appeals, ran out in April 1960 and Brown subsequently declined to grant Chessman executive clemency. Exhausting a last-minute attempt to file a writ of habeas corpus with the California Supreme Court, he finally went to the chamber on the morning of May 2, 1960. As the lethal gas was rising up in the gas chamber, the phone in the execution room rang; it was the secretary from a U.S. district judge's office calling with a ninth stay of execution (she had misdialed the number on her first attempt). This stay of execution had arisen from a realisation that Chessman was in fact still in jail (serving his previous jail term) when the first "Red Light Bandit" attack occurred. By the time the call was received, the hydrogen cyanide gas inside the chamber had reached a lethal concentration; therefore, opening the chamber's door would have been deadly for witnesses and prison officials. Chessman was pronounced dead just a few minutes later. A reporter made an arrangement with him in which he agreed to nod his head if the execution procedure was painful. Chessman vigorously nodded several times before the gas took effect.
Most people familiar with Chessman's case allege that, regardless of his actual guilt or innocence, Chessman's insistence on representing himself ultimately led to his execution. [citation needed]
[edit] Chessman in popular culture
- Before becoming famous as a country music star, Merle Haggard served time with Chessman in San Quentin.
- Chessman is mentioned on the Genesis album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.
- On the album notes of I Ain't Marching Anymore, Phil Ochs references Chessman as part of the inspiration for his song Iron Lady.
- The 1977 movie Kill Me If You Can, with Alan Alda, was based on Chessman's story.
- In the song "Done Too Soon" written by Neil Diamond, Chessman is listed along with several other famous individuals.
- Chessman is also mentioned in the song "Too Many Movies" by Roy Harper.
