Word: chessman
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...bulletin to patrol cars: two armed men had just robbed a clothing store and escaped in a grey Ford. Shortly afterward, two officers in a patrol car spotted a grey Ford, pursued it, ran it down after a wild, 70-m.p.h. chase. Driver of the fleeing Ford: Caryl Chessman...
Damaging Evidence. Charged with the Red Light Bandit crimes as well as the clothing-store robbery, Chessman insisted on acting as his own defense counsel. He denied the red-light crimes, but the evidence against him was strong enough to convince the jury. The grey Ford (it had been stolen Jan. 13) matched descriptions of the Red Light Bandit's car. At the trial, Red Light Bandit victims identified the .45 pistol that Chessman had tossed away when the pursuing patrol car caught up with him. Witnesses also said that a pen flashlight found in the grey Ford looked...
...Chessman was convicted and sentenced in Los Angeles County Superior Court on a total of 17 counts. The two counts on which Judge Charles W. Fricke sentenced Chessman to death were not the sexual assaults, but two offenses under the California kidnaping statute, which makes it a capital offense to "seize" anyone "for ransom, reward or to commit extortion or robbery," if the victim suffers "bodily harm." The prosecution argued, and the jury agreed, that by robbing the woman and the girl, then forcing them into his car and sexually assaulting them, Chessman had committed kidnaping for robbery with bodily...
...Mazes. Since July 1948, a cell 4 ft. 6 in. wide, 10 ft. 6 in. long and 7 ft. 6 in. high has been Caryl Chessman's world. In it he has, in his own words, "read or skimmed 10,000 legal books, and written between two and three million words." In the opinion of celebrated Liability Lawyer Melvin ("King of Torts") Belli, Chessman has become "one of the sharpest and best-trained lawyers I have met." With the help of various lawyers, self-taught Legal Expert Chessman managed to keep his case dragging back and forth through...
Fricke's error, as the U.S. Supreme Court saw it, lay in denying Chessman's request to be present at the mid-1949 hearings at which Judge Fricke certified the transcript that a substitute court reporter put together from Perry's notes...