Caryl Whittier Chessman (May 27, 1921 ' May 2, 1960) was a convicted robber and rapist who gained fame as a death row inmate in California. Chessman's case attracted worldwide attention, and as a result he became a cause célèbre for the movement to ban capital punishment.

[edit] Crime and conviction

Born in St. Joseph, Michigan, Caryl Chessman was a criminal with a long record who 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 17 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 17-year-old girl named Mary Alice Meza a short distance from her car demanding oral sex from 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 12 years he spent on death row, Chessman filed dozens of appeals and successfully avoided eight execution deadlines, often by a few 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.^[1] 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 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] Public appeals

Chessman argued his case in the court of public opinion through letters, essays and books. While on death row, he wrote four books: Cell 2455, Death Row (1954), Trial by Ordeal (1955), The Face of Justice (1957) and The Kid Was A Killer (1960). Chessman's memoirs became bestsellers and ignited a worldwide 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, Dwight MacDonald, and Robert Frost, and from such other public figures as former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Christian evangelist Billy Graham.^[2]

The manuscript of Chessman's novel The Kid Was a Killer was seized by San Quentin warden Harley O. Teets in 1954 on the theory that it was 'prison labor'. The manuscript was eventually returned to Chessman in late 1957 and published in 1960.^[3] In addition to giving him worldwide fame, or notoriety, depending on one's point of view, the books earned Chessman hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties.^{[citation needed]}

[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, Chessman finally went to the gas chamber at San Quentin Prison on May 2, 1960.

As the execution began and the chamber was filling with gas, the telephone rang. The caller was a judge's secretary informing the warden of a new stay of execution. The warden responded, "It's too late; the execution has begun," meaning there was no way to open the door and remove Chessman without the fumes killing others.^[4] The secretary had initially misdialed the telephone number and this may have made the difference between there being time to stop the execution and not. The alleged new evidence, which prompted the stay attempt, appears in very few accounts.

The celebrated author Dominique Lapierre visited Chessman several times during his incarceration. Lapierre was then a young reporter working for a French newspaper. His account of Chessman appears in the book A Thousand Suns.

[edit] Author

• While on death row, Chessman sold the rights to his autobiography, Cell 2455, Death Row to Columbia Pictures. The book was made into a film of the same name, directed by Fred F. Sears in 1955, with William Campbell as Chessman. Chessman's middle name, Whittier, was used as the surname of his alter ego protagonist in the film.

[edit] In popular culture

In 1977, Alan Alda starred in a CBS television movie about Chessman's life, Kill Me If You Can (sometimes shown subsequently as The Caryl Chessman Story).

Mexican professional wrestler Kevin Zamora uses the identity of "Chessman" after Caryl Chessman, wearing red facepaint that he claims represents the blood of Chessman's victims. One of his nicknames in the wrestling world is "El Asesino de la Luz Roja", Spanish for "The Red Light Killer".

In Brazil, Chessman inspired João Ac�¡cio Pereira da Costa, who became the Brazilian criminal known as "O Bandido da Luz Vermelha" (Portuguese for "The Red Light Bandit"), due to the fact he used a flashlight with a red mouth to commit his crimes, similarly to Chessman.

He is referenced in the Genesis song "Broadway Melody of 1974" from their 1974 album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. The line goes "Caryl Chessman sniffs the air and leads the parade. He knows in a scent you can bottle all you made."

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Biography portal

• Caryl Chessman online
• Newsreel footage about Caryl Chessman
• Caryl Chessman at Find a Grave
• An in depth article on Chessman
• FBI files on Caryl Chessman
• Chessman on Crime Library
• Cell 2455 Death Row at the Internet Movie Database
• Kill Me If You Can at the Internet Movie Database