Convict and writer, born in St Joseph, Michigan, USA. He was sentenced to death in 1948 on 17 charges of kidnapping, robbery, and rape, but was granted eight stays of execution by the Governor of California amounting to a record period of 12 years under sentence of death, without a reprieve. During this period he maintained his innocence and conducted a brilliant legal battle from prison, learned four languages, and wrote the best-selling books against capital punishment Cell 2455 Death Row (1956), which was also filmed, Trial by Ordeal (1956), and The Face of Justice (1958). His execution provoked worldwide criticism of US judicial methods.
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.
Crime and Conviction
Chessman was a criminal with a long record who had spent most of his adult life behind bars. 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. 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.
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.
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. 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. 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.
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. 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.
In addition to giving him world-wide notoriety, the books earned Chessman hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties.
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. 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 occured. 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.
User Comments Add a comment…