Original subtitles

At 10am on 2nd of May 1960, United States District Judge Louis Goodman agreed to a stay

of execution in the case of Carol Chesman, convicted kidnapper, due to be executed in

a few moments time.

The judge instructed his secretary to telephone San Quentin prison to halt the execution.

She got the wrong number.

This was the ninth time that a stay of execution had been granted to Chesman since he had

been found guilty way back in May 1948.

Since then, he had been on death row in San Quentin prison for 12 years, protesting his

innocence.

Outside San Quentin on the morning of his execution was a large crowd of demonstrators.

May displayed their disgust at the Captain Mouse game the legal system had played.

Inside the prison, Carol Chesman, in his stocking feet, was being escorted from the condemned

cell through guarded doors and into the little octagonal steel room that was a San Quentin

gas chamber.

He was strapped into the right hand of two chairs.

The cyanide pellets under it were ready to be released into a pan of acid.

Across San Francisco Bay, Judge Goodman's secretary had checked the number of the prison.

As she started dialing again, the door of the execution chamber was closed.

The trial had led to that moment, began over 12 years before, at 4.30 am on Sunday

the 18th of January 1948.

A dentist named Thomas Bartle was driving south along the Pacific Coast Highway from Malibu,

California with a girl named Anne Plaskovitz.

The late model Ford started to follow them, flashing a red light.

Thinking that it must be the police, they stopped and a man demanded Bartle's driver's

arms.

When he in turn asked to see identification, the man produced a gun.

They gave him $15 and he drove off.

Later the same day, a second couple were parked on a deserted road when a car with a red

spotlight drove up beside them.

The driver stole a small sum of money and drove off.

On the following night, another couple were also parked overlooking the city.

The light colored Ford with a red spotlight drew up and a masked man asked for their

identification.

This time he forced the girl into his car and ordered her to perform sexual acts on

him.

She kept calm and when a car approached, she suggested that it might be the police and

that he should take off the handkerchief mask.

As he did so, she got a good look at his face.

He let her go and the couple raced to the police.

At midnight the same night, the robber took exactly one dollar off another couple who

were parked off Mulholland Drive.

The fourth and last hold up by the man who was to become known as the red light bandit

happened in the early morning of the 22nd of January, also high in the Hollywood Hills.

This time the bandit pulled the girl into his car.

Her boyfriend escaped and drove to the police while the masked abductor tried to rape the

girl.

Unable to complete the act, he again forced his victim to perform filatio before releasing

her.

The next day after an armed robbery at Redondo Beach, a suspect car was chased and stopped.

One of the men in it ran off.

The police arrested him after a chase.

His name was Carol Chessman and he had a long record of petty crime.

Carol Whittier Chessman had been born in 1921 in St Joseph, Michigan.

This month later the family moved to Glendale, California.

When he was nine, tragedy struck.

His mother was paralyzed in a car crash.

His father twice tried to kill himself and was unable to support his family.

The young Carol began to steal food to feed them.

Chessman had his first brush with the law at the age of 16 when he was sent to a young

offender school for car theft and burglary.

He then served two terms at a youth camp for violent juvenile offenders.

Over the next 11 years he served time for car theft, robbery, assault with a deadly weapon

and assaulting a police officer.

He was an unusual prisoner with an IQ of 136.

He edited the San Quentin Prison newspaper, taught shorthand and wrote scripts for the

prison radio station.

He had been out on parole only a couple of weeks when he was arrested fleeing from the

stolen car.

The car fitted the description of the red light bandit's vehicle.

It had a spotlight mounted by the driver's window and police found a red handkerchief

knotted so that it would fit over this lamp and make it into a red light.

What happened next remained the subject of dispute.

According to the police, Chessman confessed of his own volition to being the red light

bandit.

But he claimed that he was brutally beaten.

He insisted that he agreed to make a false confession only because in return the police

would drop all charges except robbery.

This was a crucial question because contrary to the deal he thought he had made, Chessman

was arraigned on 18 charges which included kidnapping.

Following the abduction of Charles Lindbergh's baby son, kidnapping with bodily harm with

intent to commit robbery had been made a capital offense in California whether or not anyone

was killed.

And so if Carol Chessman were to be found guilty of forcing the two women from their

car to his, he would technically be eligible for the death sentence despite the fact that

he had neither murdered or fully raped anyone.

Many people felt that press reports before and during Chessman's trial inflamed public

opinion by greatly exaggerating the ordeals of his victims.

In his arrest in the start of his trial on 30 April 1948, Chessman hired four attorneys

among them Al Matthews.

He finally represented himself not very competently.

He allowed so many prosecution errors and excesses to go unchallenged that some observers

thought that he was deliberately trying to ensure a mistrial.

Although he was identified by several of the victims as the red light bandit, the identification

procedures were all subject to flaws.

For each lineup the victims were shown Chessman on his own and had him pointed out to them.

Some of the descriptions of the bandit fitted him, others did not.

Nevertheless, the jury found him guilty on 17 cuts including three of kidnapping and recommended

the death penalty.

Now began 12 years of appeals.

Like a cat, Carol Chessman turned out to have nine lives with eight stays of execution.

His first attempt to save his life came in June 1948 shortly after he had been moved

to San Quentin.

The court reporter at his trial died before he had transcribed more than a third from

his shorthand notes.

Chessman appealed for a new trial because there was now no possibility of an accurate

transcript.

The reporter, the brother-in-law of the prosecuting attorney, was employed to complete the job.

It turned out he was an alcoholic and in October the court reporter's association protested

that his transcript was unreadable.

But in June 1949 the judge who had tried Chessman certified it as accurate.

Chessman was not asked for his approval.

For the next two years, as the United States became fascinated by the revelations of major

criminals during the Kefauver inquiries, petty crook Chessman fought to prove that the transcript

was so inaccurate that a new trial must be called.

But in May 1951, the US Supreme Court refused to consider his case.

As the nation mourned the retirement of Jodem Adjo, Chessman's appeal was considered by a

Californian court.

Chess rejected him and set a date for execution on the 28th of March 1952.

Chessman's second chance of life came in February 1952, when his execution was postponed for

another referral to the US Supreme Court.

The Chessman soon heard that this had been refused and then came the devastating news

that the execution would be carried out on the 27th of June.

But almost immediately came another reprieve from the gas chamber when Chessman was given

fresh leave to appeal his case.

For the rest of 1952, while the American public thrilled to the appearance of a new hero,

top-along Cassidy, Chessman continued his bitter and lonely fight to prove that his

original trial had been faulty.

But in May 1953, the US Court of Appeals turned him down.

At the beginning of 1954, a third execution date was set.

It now seemed that nothing could save Chessman from taking his place in the gas chamber.

But then on the day before he was due to die, Chessman's lawyer, Bo and Rice, convinced

California's judge Thomas Keating to agree to another stay of execution.

He rushed to the prison and told Chessman, I've got some news for you, Chess.

You're going to be around for a little longer, at least.

During his three-year-old deal, Carol Chessman had changed from a bright, petty hudlem into

a literate and intelligent thinker.

He had turned his cell into a study center on the law and had just published the first

of three books pleading his case.

This was celled 2455 death row.

It quickly became an international bestseller and alerted the world to his plight.

Over the next six years, Chessman published two more books in which he argued not only

that his original trial had been deeply flawed, but that he had done nothing to deserve to

be on death row.

From his condemned cell, Chessman pointed out that the original identifications of him

as the red light bandit had been incorrectly carried out and that his original confession

had been forced out of him.

Alongside him in San Quentin were men who had committed far worse crimes but were not

now facing the gas chamber.

But for all his pleading, the California Supreme Court again refused to reconsider the case

and a new execution date was set for the 30th of July 1954, for the first time Chessman

seemed totally dispirited.

But again, there was a last-minute reprieve when a local judge granted a stay so that

Chessman could go back to the US Supreme Court.

Certainly his attorney general was infuriated.

By now, Chessman was no longer a lonely figure fighting for his life, but a man whose struggle

had gained him friends all over the world.

He also now had a fiancé, Francis Couturia.

Their support was sorely needed as the sea-sore legal battle continued.

In June 1957, the US Supreme Court finally took the dramatic step of ordering the California

courts to hold a new hearing on the whole validity of the original court transcripts.

For the first time, it was ordered that Carol Chessman must be present at the hearing.

He was taken to the state Supreme Court accompanied by the new attorneys that the

income from his books had enabled him to employ.

Disputes over the transcripts dragged on for another two years as Chessman and his lawyers

went back and forth to court.

By now a new element had entered the case.

California had repealed the Little Lindbergh law under which Chessman was to be executed.

An increasing number of people felt that the only legal justification for demanding

the death penalty had now been removed.

Chessman had been on death row for more than eight years.

For many it seemed inhumane that he should still be fighting for his life when the state

legislature had decided that the original law under which he had been condemned could

no longer be justified.

It had also granted parole eligibility to everyone else who had been convicted under

it.

But the court took the view that it must concentrate solely on the technical legal point on the

transcripts and not take any broader issues into account.

On the 7th of July 1959, Chessman's attorneys, Rosalie Asher and George Davis, would advise

that the California Supreme Court had decided that the transcript was substantially correct,

even though 2000 changes were inserted for the record.

The new execution date was set for the 24th of October 1959.

After a reprieve of four years, Chessman was again faced with a definite date for execution,

but he announced his determination to fight on.

His case was now being followed all over the world.

There were protest meetings in many capitals, an international petition was set up and signed

by more than two million people.

Evening nations which had not abandoned the death penalty at that time, like Britain or

France, there was astonishment that a man could have been kept waiting for so many years.

In Italy, the newspaper or servitori Romano wrote, anyone who has to wait 11 years for

the gas chamber has expiated his guilt.

His names, who lent their support, included Pope John XXIII, Albert Schweitzer, Eleanor

Roosevelt, Queen Fabiola of Belgium, Pablo Casals, Shirley MacLean and Marlon Brando.

Faced with this pressure, California's Governor Edmund Brown announced that he was considering

the appeals, that local political reaction proved too strong, and on the 19th of October

1959 he refused to grant clemency.

30 years later, in his book, Public Justice, Private Mercy, Brown wrote, Chessman was a

nasty, arrogant, unrepentant man, almost certainly guilty of the crimes he was convicted of,

but I don't think those crimes deserve the death penalty.

Governor Brown's experience with Chessman had planted the seeds of doubt about the effectiveness

of the death penalty.

As I moved along and I watched the people that killed, I concluded it didn't do any good,

that these people would kill whether you had capital punishment or not, for the state to

do it, it seemed to me that it cheapened the life of everybody.

The effect on the officials involved also concerned him.

I never knew whether I did right, and that's a terrible responsibility, even though the

jury and the courts have all decided he should die.

Nevertheless, the petitions may have played a part in persuading US Supreme Court Justice

Douglas to agree to another appeal to the Supreme Court, but it was too little avail,

and on the 11th of January 1960 the court again refused to consider the case.

A new execution date was set for the 19th of February.

But in an unexpected new twist, with only one day to go, Governor Brown granted a 60-day

reprieve.

He also announced that he would be recommending the abolition of the death penalty in California.

The battle lines were now drawn up on this new attempt to find a solution.

Once again, Chessman found himself back in his cell to await events.

Even more extraordinarily, it was now announced that Chessman would be allowed to hold a televised

press conference.

Smartly dressed, he was asked whether he was now going for broke.

I believe I have been all along.

I do have no effort to live.

One point, there was a willingness on my part when the great many friends prevailed on me

to consider accepting a commutation of sentience.

When that was rejected and made a political issue, I have decided since then that I am

either going to survive and be vindicated and walk the streets a free man or I am going

to wind up dead.

What if you were to secure your release on tomorrow?

What would be the first thing you do on the outside?

Do you have any idea?

I would probably take a good long look at the sky when there wasn't any bars around.

A journalist then wanted to know whether he had ever lost hope.

Well I don't know if I ever actually had hope.

It's like a soldier out in the field, a battlefield.

I don't know if he has hope or not.

He just keeps slogging forward as much as possible and then waits for the results.

Whether the shell might hit him, well in the same way in a legal sense, the shell might

have hit me and that would have been the end of May.

Chessman was then asked how many people had been executed in California while he waited

on death row.

I believe before I left San Quentin it was 75 men and one woman.

I had heard that each one of these affected you quite strongly.

Well they did of course in the sense that I saw men walk by myself and he never returned

and I had occasion to reflect on the fact that it often wasn't murder that was a capital

offense.

It was ignorance or the fact that the man was fundless or friendless.

You see reading the paper where someone perhaps was more fortunate and would get a conviction

for second degree murder on what might be an identical set of facts that would put

someone else in the gas chamber.

I don't feel that there's anything equitable or fair or sensible or socially valid about

capital punishment.

Even when asked how he now felt he reacted with dignity.

I don't feel about it.

I've gone beyond the point of feeling.

You don't react subjectively after ten years.

How can you?

You don't have the capacity to feel anymore.

By now Chessman had learnt not to raise his hopes too high.

And his caution was justified when the state senate judiciary committee confounded his

attorney George Davis's hopes by refusing to consider the death penalty abolition bill.

After more than eleven years in the shadow of the gas chamber and a total of eight stays

of execution Chessman still protested his innocence.

But more importantly now he felt that he was fighting to make a contribution to a more

humane society.

The petty crook would be gone his long struggle defiantly and bitterly was now hoping that

his example would lead to the abolition of capital punishment.

That night protesters gathered outside the prison for a final vigil.

By the morning set for Chessman's execution their numbers had been increased by newsmen

from all over the world.

Chessman's attorneys were making their last pleas to get another stay.

Security of the prison was tight and all other prisoners had been confined to their cells

until the execution due at ten o'clock was completed.

As ten o'clock approached Chessman's attorneys succeeded in persuading Judge Goodman that

there were new arguments that should be considered.

As the final minutes ticked away the judge instructed his secretary to get the prison.

She dialed its number GL4 1460 but she got a wrong number and precious seconds were wasted

as she dialed again.

Meanwhile Chessman had been taken from his cell and led the short distance to the gas

chamber.

He walked unaided into the metal box and was strapped into the right hand chair.

Even as the judge's secretary got through to the prison governor the cyanide pellets

had dropped into the acid bowl.

All the judge could do was turn to George Davis and say it's too late the pellets have

been dropped.

Defined to the last, Carroll Chessman held his breath for one last extra minute before

ending his 12 year ordeal.