Word: chessman
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...kidnaping of two women, crimes of sex perversion against each of them, and the attempted rape of one of them-"indescribable crimes," as the Los Angeles Times put it last week, whose "horrible details lie in the decent exclusiveness of the court records." Clearly no ordinary criminal, Caryl Chessman, grade-school educated, had an IQ of 136, and he argued his own case creditably in court. Nonetheless, he was convicted by a jury under California's "Little Lindbergh Law" (which, like the federal "Lindbergh Law," makes kidnaping with bodily harm a capital offense) and sentenced...
...While Chessman's ringing, indignant denunciations of capital punishment were being avidly read, he himself digested dozens of law books, wrote briefs, held press conferences, won his celebrated series of postponements of sentence...
...enough for a man standing on the brink of death. In the span of a dozen years, he had won seven stays of execution, had made no fewer than 15 appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court ("The conclusion is irresistible," wrote Justice William O. Douglas in June 1957, "that Chessman is playing a game with the courts...
Indecision & Mockery. Chessman's last chance loomed last week. As public opinion poured its torrents on Governor Brown, two attorneys for Chessman made two final appeals for clemency to the State Supreme Court. The court turned them down, 4-3. Under California's law, the Governor may not issue a pardon or commutation of sentence for a two-time loser like Chessman over an adverse Supreme Court decision-but he can still give a reprieve. At the same time, California precedent holds that Pat Brown, had he wanted to grant clemency, could properly have so notified the court...
...Brown, left with the final decision, was rocked by indecision: a longtime opponent of capital punishment, Brown, for eight years California's attorney general, nevertheless believed Chessman to be guilty, unrepentant and undeserving of clemency. Observed Chessman shrewdly at a press conference: The issue of capital punishment would be so much clearer if he were dead...