Caryl Chessman

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Carol Whittier "Caryl" Chessman (born May 27, 1921 in St. Joseph , Michigan , † May 2, 1960 in San Quentin State Prison , California ) was an American convicted of robbery and rape , who was mainly because of his twelve years on death row 2455 in San Quentin became known.

Chessman, who protested his innocence to the end and wrote several books on death row, was executed on May 2, 1960 in the prison's gas chamber . The case attracted global attention and sparked a wide-ranging discussion about the legality of the death penalty . More than half a century after his death, Chessman was actually the so-called “Red Light Bandit” for whose actions he was executed.

The San Quentin State Prison , on whose death row Caryl Chessman waited twelve years to be executed

Life

Adolescent years

Chessman, whose father Serl Chessman was a direct descendant of the poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), was born in 1921 as Carol Whittier Chessman in the US state of Michigan. His middle name was taken from his known ancestor at the request of his father. Chessman gradually modified his rather feminine-sounding first name Carol, which already brought him a lot of ridicule as a child, to Caryl. However, the name was never officially changed.

Chessman's family moved to the Californian city of Glendale shortly after he was born . His youth was marked by numerous serious illnesses and frequent changes of residence. At the age of five he fell ill with life-threatening pneumonia . After he later showed signs of asthma , the family moved to Pasadena , where the supposedly better climate was supposed to alleviate the effects of the disease. Here Chessman discovered his talent for playing the piano, which he had to give up after suffering from severe meningitis . At the age of eight, he survived a serious traffic accident in the back seat of his mother's car. Chessman's mother remained paraplegic, and he himself suffered a broken nose and a broken jaw.

The mother's paralysis worsened the Chessmans' financial situation and the family had to move again to a poorer residential area of ​​Glendale. Later Chessman fell ill with diphtheria and had to stay in bed for six months. After his recovery, Chessman committed his first offenses. The first car thefts and counterfeiting followed several break-ins. Chessman was arrested during a raid on a butcher's shop but was able to escape from prison. In 1937 he was arrested again after a car theft and taken to the County Forrestry Camp, from which he also fled twice. He was then transferred to the "Preston State Industrial School" in Ione , from which the responsible judge released him a year later.

Chessman continued his break-ins and thefts. There were also raids on brothels in the Hollywood Hills . After another arrest, he was sent back to the State Industrial School for stealing cars and counterfeiting money. He was not released until June 1939 and moved to live with his parents in Los Angeles . Only a few weeks later, he came into conflict with the law again and was jailed for theft. After several thefts and long stays in reform schools, Chessman met a girl with whom he fled to Las Vegas . After returning to Glendale, they married. But shortly after the marriage, Chessman formed a gang with young people he had met in the correctional institutions and committed further robberies and thefts.

He was arrested again during a raid on a gas station and found guilty of participating in four break-ins in the ensuing proceedings. Chessman was sentenced to 16 years in prison. Chessman first entered San Quentin Prison on May 11, 1941. His cell was opposite death row , where he would later spend the last years of his life. In prison he became the main assistant to the educational officer and was the head of the "Prisoner Debating Team".

From 1942 he wrote articles for the radio program "San Quentin on Air". Because of his exemplary leadership, Chessman was transferred to the Chino Detention Center after a year . The security precautions there were significantly lower and so after a four-month stay he fled through a back gate, where friends were waiting for him with a getaway car.

A short time later he was arrested again and taken back to San Quentin, where he stayed until 1945. He was then transferred to Sacramento . After his wife divorced him, Chessman spent two more years in prison. The remainder of his sentence was suspended in December 1947. After his release, he went to Los Angeles, where he committed several armed robberies on betting shops.

The red light bandit

Chessman had been at large for less than two months when he and his accomplice David H. Knowles were arrested on January 23, 1948, after both of them had previously given up a police chase. Chessman's car was shot at by the police during the pursuit. After his imprisonment, he was accused of being the notorious "red light bandit" who had been attacking lovers in Los Angeles for several weeks. The red-light bandit always chose cars parked in lonely arteries. With a flashing light on the roof of his car, he gave the occupants the impression that it was a police patrol. He asked the victims to hand over their purses and in some cases had the female victim get out of the car to accompany him. In at least two cases, the perpetrator forced fellatio on the victim . One of the victims was a seventeen-year-old girl who spent several years in a mental hospital as a result of being raped.

Trial and years in prison

Based on the testimony of some eyewitnesses, Chessman was brought to justice. There he defended himself and claimed during the trial that the confession he had previously signed had been forced from him by the police. He also claimed that he knew the identity of the real red light bandit. However, he is not ready to reveal his name because it is a person close to him.

On June 25, 1948 the trial of the case "The People of the State of California versus Caryl Chessman" ended before the jury in Los Angeles. He was charged with a total of 17 crimes such as robbery, kidnapping and rape . The jury announced the verdict: death by gassing twice. He also received 15 imprisonment sentences, including one life sentence.

That Chessman could even be sentenced to death for kidnapping was only possible because of the Federal Kidnapping Act . This law, introduced after the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's son, was also known as the "Lindbergh Law" and was originally intended to combat child abduction. Various US states, including California, introduced their own variants of the law, which were also known as the "Little Lindbergh Laws". Under this law, if a criminal did physical harm to his victim while being kidnapped, he could be sentenced to death. This law was applied to Chessman, who, according to the jury, raped two of his victims during the kidnapping. Although the victims were forced to engage in sexual acts “only” a few meters from the car, the court interpreted this as kidnapping with subsequent rape. Only on the basis of this decision could Chessman be sentenced to death .

On July 5, 1948, Chessman was transferred to death row. In prison, he turned into a writer and wrote four books. Cell 2455 Death Row , the first book published in 1954, sold over a million copies. The book has been translated into 18 languages, including German. In his third book, The Face of Justice , Chessman claims that he made arrangements to reveal the identity of the red light bandit 50 years after the day the State of California rejected a moratorium on the death penalty. While in custody, Chessman met the future country star Merle Haggard , who was serving a sentence for burglary in San Quentin .

While in detention, Chessman attempted to get his trial retried. He relied on the inaccurate copies of the court minutes. The original stenographer had died during the trial and two thirds of the statements had not yet been fully transcribed. The newly appointed stenographer had been unsuccessfully rejected by Chessman as biased because he was related to the prosecutor and also an alcoholic. He altered his predecessor's notes and was unable to correctly interpret some of his own notes in the courtroom. Chessman appealed the verdict to 42 and wanted to bring his trial to the United States Supreme Court with the assistance of a lawyer .

His date of execution was postponed eight times in the following years. The following overview shows the scheduled execution dates and the postponement dates:

Scheduled execution date Postponement date
March 28, 1952 19th February 1952
June 27, 1952 June 23, 1952
May 14, 1954 May 13, 1954
July 30, 1954 July 28, 1954
January 14, 1955 January 11, 1955
July 15, 1955 5th July 1955
October 23, 1959 October 21, 1959
February 19, 1960 February 19, 1960
May 2, 1960 Execution despite renewed postponement

Most recently, Chessman's execution was postponed on February 19, 1960. The then California Governor Pat Brown was an opponent of the death penalty. However, to date he had not intervened in the Chessman case. Just hours before the scheduled execution date, he postponed it by 60 days. Brown later claimed to have postponed the execution only because President Dwight D. Eisenhower was touring South America . An execution of Chessman could have endangered his security, as the case had already led to strong anti-American protests in Uruguay . The Brazilian government also expressed its concerns about the verdict, and petitions with thousands of signatures were also submitted from other countries for a pardon for Chessman. A rodeo rider known as the "Minuteman" rode from San Francisco to Sacramento, collecting signatures to save Chessmans on his way.

Commenting on the constantly postponed execution dates, Chessman said:

A cat, I was told, has nine lives. If so, I know how a cat feels when, under the most hair-raising conditions, forced to spend the first eight of those lives on survival in a Chamber of Secrets battle, and the Grim Reaper put it on his mind got that it would be a great joke to try and bag the ninth as well.

The imminent execution of Chessman led to protests and sharp criticism of the US legal system around the world. While the verdict was largely approved by the US population, intellectuals such as human rights activist Eleanor Roosevelt , writers Aldous Huxley , Ray Bradbury , Norman Mailer , William Inge , Dwight Macdonald , Christopher Isherwood , Steve Allen , Robert Frost , the journalist Carey McWilliams and the preacher Billy Graham against the death sentence. Governor Brown's office received countless letters pleading for mercy on Chessman. On the eve of the execution, a delegation that included Marlon Brando and Shirley MacLaine demanded a pardon for Chessman.

Other commentators criticized the fact that Chessman received too much attention and that European journalists in particular rarely mentioned the fate of Chessman's victims.

Chessman's last attorney, George T. Davis, sought a retrial. Davis, previously known for the rehabilitation of the innocent death row worker activist Thomas Mooney , wanted to bring the case to the US Supreme Court.

the execution

The California State Gas Chamber in San Quentin State Prison after being converted for lethal injection

Chessman, who only ate coffee and milk as well as some ice cream as a hangman's meal , was to be executed on May 2, 1960 in the gas chamber of the San Quentin prison.

After Chessman in the gas chamber had been fixed on the chair, the executioner directed the execution of one. When the first plumes of gas began to rise in the chamber, the death row phone rang . A few minutes before the scheduled execution date, George T. Davis had been able to convince a judge to give him another stay. However, his secretary initially dialed the wrong phone number and only reached the prison on her second attempt. The prison officer told her that the process was too far advanced and could not be stopped.

At the time, Chessman was the death row inmate who had waited longest to be executed in the United States. In total, he had spent 4,319 days on San Quentin death row. More recently, Mumia Abu-Jamal (from 1982 to 2008), David Carpenter (since 1984), Dean Carter (since 1985), Richard Ramírez (24 years, † 2013) and Stanley "Tookie" Williams ( 24 years, † 2005) exceeded many times over.

The Chessman Case in Popular Culture

Caryl Chessman's life has been filmed twice so far. The first film adaptation Cell 2455 Death Row from 1955, directed by Fred F. Sears , was based on Chessman's book Death Row 2455 , which was written on death row . Chessman's person forms the basis for the figure of Whit, who analyzes the circumstances from prison that brought him to death row.

It was not until 1977 that the case was filmed again by director Buzz Kulik . In the film The Man on Death Row (original title: Kill Me If You Can ) Alan Alda takes on the role of the sentenced to death offender. Also starring are Talia Shire as Chessmans lawyer Rosalie Asher and John Hillerman seen.

The American rock musician Ronnie Hawkins published the song The Ballad of Caryl Chessman in 1960 , which rose to number 32 on the Canadian charts in March of that year.

Chessman is also mentioned on the album The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway by the British band Genesis . So it says in the play Broadway Melody of 1974 :

" Caryl Chessman sniffs the air and leads the parade, he knows in a scent, you can bottle all you made. "

In the liner notes to his album I Ain't Marching Anymore , songwriter Phil Ochs names the Chessman case as part of the inspiration for his piece Iron Lady , in which he takes a critical position on the death penalty.

In the introduction to Stephen King's Stuffed Animal Cemetery , Chessman is mentioned as "one of the people who wrote books about what they did and why they did it."

He is also mentioned in Hunter S. Thompson's novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas .

Fonts

  • Death Row 2455. (English: Cell 2455, Death Row , 1954), Heyne Verlag, 1960.
  • Trial by Ordeal. Prentice-Hall, 1955.
  • The Face of Justice. Prentice-Hall, 1957.
  • The Kid Was a Killer. Gold Medal, 1960.

literature

  • Alan Bisbort: When You Read This, They Will Have Killed Me. The Life and Redemption of Caryl Chessman, Whose Exexution Shook America. Carroll & Graf, New York 2006, ISBN 978-0-7867-1627-2 (English)
  • Theodore Hamm: Rebel and a Cause: Caryl Chessman and the Politics of the Death Penalty in Postwar California, 1948-1974. University of California Press, 2001, ISBN 0-520-22428-0 (English)
  • Frank J. Parker: Caryl Chessman, the Red Light Bandit. Burnham, 1975, ISBN 978-0-88229-188-8 (Eng.)
  • William M. Kunstler: Beyond a Reasonable doubt? The original trial of Caryl Chessman. William Morrow and Company, New York 1961. (Eng.)
  • Caryl Chessmann , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 26/1960 from June 20, 1960, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Der Spiegel 11/1960 of March 9, 1960 - Mouse or Cat
  2. ↑ Der Spiegel , No. 11/1960, p. 53, quoted from Eiber, S. ( Memento from June 15, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ " A cat, I am told, has nine lives. If that is true, I know how a cat feels when, under the most hair-raising conditions, it has been obliged to expend the first eight of those lives in a chamber-of-horrors battle for survival, and the Grim Reaper gets it into his head that it will be great sport to try to bag the ninth. "
  4. ↑ Peter Maxwill: Caryl Chessman: The man who died nine times. Article on one day of June 24, 2013. Accessed June 25, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Chessman, Caryl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Chessman, Caryl Whittier
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American criminal
DATE OF BIRTH May 27, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Joseph , Michigan
DATE OF DEATH May 2, 1960
Place of death San Quentin State Prison