Caryl Whittler Chessman ( May 27, 1921 , St. Joseph - May 2, 1960 ) is an American writer, criminal, burglar, and rapist who has gained national fame for nearly twelve years on death row in a California jail. His case was the reason for the development of the movement to ban the death penalty in the United States.
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Content
- 1 Biography
- 2 Bibliography
- 3 notes
- 4 References
Biography
Born in the city of (Michigan) in a poor family. In childhood, he was very painful, had pneumonia for five years, then suffered meningitis and diphtheria. He began an illegal life from his youth, stealing cars and committing petty thefts, and spent most of his adult life behind bars. Until March 1941, he visited a correctional school (from where he escaped twice) and was imprisoned four times in the district for armed attacks and car thefts; in March 1941, he was sent to San Quentin Prison for a term of sixteen years to life imprisonment for robbery, armed assault, and attempted murder. In 1943 he escaped from prison, in 1944 he was again caught, in 1947 he was released on parole, but was again arrested on January 23, 1948.
He committed his crimes during this period with the help of the so-called “red light”: while hiding in a car in secluded places at night, he gave passing cars a red light signal, posing as a policeman; when people stopped and opened windows or got out of the car, he robbed them, and raped women. Several times he also committed armed robberies of street passers-by in Los Angeles parks, and also took women hostage, at gunpoint forcing them to various sexual perversions. Since, according to California laws of that time, capital punishment was allowed for any bodily harm inflicted on a victim, on May 18, 1948, Chessman was sentenced to capital punishment for the totality of his crimes. At the trial, Chessman tried to defend himself by refusing the services of a lawyer, and claimed that he was innocent, and all charges against him were fabricated.
While in custody, Chessman managed to attract huge public attention to his process through letters and articles that he wrote and found the opportunity to print them. He also wrote four books in prison: Cell 2455, Death Row (1954, autobiography), Trial by Ordeal (1955), The Face of Justice (1957), and The Kid Was A Killer (1960). The last novel was written by him before other works, but in 1954 it was withdrawn by the prison administration, returned to Chessman in 1957 and published only after his death in 1960. He sold the rights to an autobiography in 1955 to the film company Columbia Pictures, which based on the book made a film of the same name in 1955; the main motive of this film was that Chessman’s criminal was made by the society in which he lived.
His books became bestsellers not only in the United States, but also in Latin America, and led to the creation of a whole movement that advocated the abolition of his death sentence, and the governor of California received a huge number of letters asking for pardon Chessman, and many of the senders were very well-known American and foreign public figures, including Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury, and even former US First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
Caryl Chessman became one of the longest-living death row inmates - he spent eleven years and eight months in the cell, having filed dozens of appeals during this time and successfully achieved the postponement of the death penalty eight times. The last deferral was granted to him by the Governor of California on February 19, 1960. Once again, the state legislature refused to replace the death penalty with life imprisonment, and on May 2, 1960, Chessman was executed in a gas chamber.
Several scientific papers have been written on the life of Chessman and his influence on the debate on the death penalty of the United States.
Bibliography
- Bisbort, Alan: When You Read This, They Will Have Killed Me. The Life and Redemption of Caryl Chessman, Whose Exexution Shook America. Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York, 2006, ISBN 978-0-78671-627-2 .
- Hamm, Theodore: Rebel and a Cause: Caryl Chessman and the Politics of the Death Penalty in Postwar California, 1948-1974. University of California Press, 2001, ISBN 0-52022-428-0 .
- Parker, Frank J .: Caryl Chessman, the Red Light Bandit. Burnham, Inc., 1975, ISBN 978-0-88229-188-8 .
- Kunstler, William M .: Beyond a Reasonable doubt? The original trial of Caryl Chessman. William Morrow and Company, New York, 1961.
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 BNF identifier : Open Data Platform 2011.
- ↑ 1 2 Encyclopædia Britannica
- ↑ 1 2 SNAC - 2010.