Cell 2455, Death Row
Page 38
A neighbor called me. “Did you hear that, Chess?”
“Yeah, I heard it, John,” I said, not enthusiastically. Then my ghoulish sense of humor rescued me, and I quipped our old tongue-in-cheek favorite: “You know, if I didn’t really know better, I’d be tempted to believe these people actually mean to kill me.”
“Naw!” John said.
You don’t let anyone know how you feel. You grin, hideously perhaps, but still you grin. The newspapers say you “must” die on June 27. Well, why must you die? Who says you must? And why the 27th? Sure, you’re ready to die; you’ve been ready for a long time. Only you’re still obstinate. You still aren’t ready to let them kill you. You aren’t ready to let them win. Sometimes some small inner voice tries to tell you that you still have a future, and that is when you want to laugh uproariously. Because this is your future. The gas chamber is your future (at least symbolically). Death is your future. And the Death Row is all there is for you. And what a joy it must be to society, what a comfort, what a pride—this stupid, obscene place called Death Row.
And what a perfect thing is your Hate. It drives you forward; it sustains you; it gives you a terrible sanity, and the strength to fight fire with fire. It gives the raging, the consuming inferno, meaning, does Hate. Ah, Hate, you cry out to this fanatic friend. Between the two of us we will go a long, long way. We will go right to the center of the inferno and there we will stand, taunting those too timid to follow, but ever so gently, ever so subtly. There we will stand, and our greatest triumph will be that none will comprehend it. Our victory will be unqualified, yet none will even know that we have won. What more could we possibly ask? What more than flaming destruction in an inferno that society feeds, and indignantly denies that it does so? What more appropriate end to this solemn farce than the one you and I, friend Hate, have plotted?
All roads but one were blocked off. That one led back to and through the Federal District Court. It was a narrow, doubtful road.
Thirty-eight days in advance of my scheduled execution, I filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The petition was denied. No hearings were held. Attorneys for the state were not required to answer. I had eighteen days to live.
Only one man and one piece of paper stood between me and the grave. That man was Judge Stephens of the United States Court of Appeals. The piece of paper was my application for stay of execution he was considering. If he ruled no stay, that would be it. That would be the end.
I had nine, then eight, then seven, then six, then five, then four days to live, and still no word. Death was near.
The Sergeant-in-Charge of the Row called me to the cage at the east end of the corridor. “I don’t like to have to ask you this question,” Sergeant Perry said. I knew he didn’t, for he was a friendly man, and I knew what the question was—the Warden’s Office wanted to know, in the event the information might be needed, what disposition I wanted made of my body. I told him.
I made arrangements with a friend on the Row to destroy all my personal and legal papers in the event I didn’t get a stay. “What do you think your chances are?” the friend asked. For answer I made a coin-flipping motion with my right hand.
A panel of three San Quentin psychiatrists had examined me, had certified I was legally sane. I had been notified that the governor had reviewed my case and had found no grounds for extending executive clemency. (I had made no application for such clemency.)
This looked suspiciously like the end.
The editor of the Los Angeles Mirror sent Bernice Freeman, a longtime acquaintance and ace newspaperwoman and feature writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, to interview me. Hank Osborne, the Mirror’s assistant editor, wanted a story of my life (and he got it in exchange for a promise, made through Mrs. Freeman, to send his paper to the men on the Row). He wanted to run a series of articles, starting the first one on the day I died. He wanted to sound a warning to youngsters following in my footsteps.
Mrs. Freeman and I talked in the office of Douglas C. Rigg, San Quentin’s deceptively boyish-looking Associate Warden in charge of custody. Just outside the office and visible through a large window, a garden was in full bloom, a riotous profusion of color. Overhead sea gulls soared and the sky was intensely blue. Against this tranquil background Mrs. Freeman heard the story of Caryl Chessman—heard it narrated in a detached way that was almost clinical. Her expressive, handsome features mirrored its horror, its humor, its subtlety, its savagery.
When I finished, Mrs. Freeman said, “Tell me, Caryl, are you afraid?”
I considered her question for a moment and then I shook my head slowly from side to side. “No,” I replied quietly, “I’m not afraid.”
And that, I’m convinced, is the most terrible thing that can happen to any man, for it means you are afraid of nothing because you believe in nothing, have faith in nothing. It means you have found life worthless and death consequently meaningless. It means you have traded fear for guile and hate and an angry, furious contempt, that you have turned against yourself and all that is warm and human. It means you are completely alone, securely sealed off from the reach of other men or God. Your coveted aloneness lacks only the finality that Death will give it.
At last you have reached the very heart of the inferno. Your journey with Hate is over. And you think of Swinburne and his Garden of Proserpine. Yes, you are “tired of tears and laughter, And men that laugh and weep . . .”
And still your eyes want to look back as much as the quiet, hidden part of you wants to look forward. You know what might have been and knowing this you have a vision of what yet might be—a fleeting, fragile thing this vision.
Its after-image stays with you, haunts you, and brings forth jeering laughter from Hate.
• 36 •
An Awakening
It didn’t make sense, not then. In a lot of ways, it was sordid, stupid, futile. They would walk me into the gas chamber, strap me down, seal the door shut. They would generate the gas. I would go to sleep for keeps. Then—oblivion. (What else? And if I did happen to wake up in Hell, why, what matter?)
CHESSMAN DIES IN GAS CELL, headlines would shout. Beneath would be the story in typical newspaperese. Who I was. What I had been convicted of doing. My long and violent criminal record. The years I had spent on Death Row fighting my case. A couple of human interest angles. The time the “pill” was dropped. The time I was pronounced dead. Some editorializing on a crime-doesn’t-pay note.
Honest citizens would read the story casually before turning the page, perhaps to the sports section or the comic strips. Young toughs would read it, figure I was a chump for getting caught and then go out on a robbery spree. I had done the same thing. Three friends of mine had been executed in the green room during that nine-year period following my release from reform school and before I came to the Row, myself twice sentenced to death.
Sure, I’d had ample warning. I wasn’t blaming society or crying about what had happened. I wasn’t turning soft or getting wild-eyed. In fact, I wasn’t really giving a damn. I was simply sitting in the legal cell that Tuesday morning, smoking, thinking, and trying in my own way to make sense out of my past and the fact I had no future, so far as I knew, beyond Friday morning at ten.
I was so absorbed in thought I didn’t hear or see Warden Harley Teets come through the gate and walk up to the front of the cell. When he spoke, and I looked up and saw him, it seemed to me he had suddenly materialized out of thin air. He offered me a legal size envelope he held in his right hand.
“I believe this is what you’ve been waiting for,” he said, and the tone of his voice or the expression on his face told me nothing.
I believe this is what you’ve been waiting for. Yes, that was what I’d been waiting for—a paper that would tell me whether I would live or die. I nodded, took the envelope, removed the two sheets of legal size paper, and read the typewritten words appearing on them. Judge Albert Lee Stephens of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had ordered my
execution stayed until his court heard and decided my appeal.
“Well,” I said somewhat thoughtfully, if not profoundly, “a stay.” I had spoken more to myself than to the warden, whose keen, pale blue eyes were focused intently on my face. He merely nodded, waiting, watching for my reaction, and I was soon to learn why. His concern was with something he regarded as far more important than the dramatic potential of the moment.
It took a couple of seconds for the significance of the piece of paper I held to sink in.
Yes, I could have put on a tough, casual front, said, “Yeah, this is what I’ve been waiting for,” lit a cigarette and let it go at that. Or I could have acted childishly excited and exuded a lot of phony humility. But I did neither. Instead I said, making the words a flat assertion, “Another chance.” And that precisely was what the piece of paper I held meant.
Then, really thinking out loud, I added: “To tell you the truth, Warden, here’s a chance I didn’t think I was going to get. I figured this time was apt to be it. And believe me, I was ready.”
The warden nodded his head. I’m sure he suspected how ready I had been. He must have, for he asked, “I wonder, Caryl, if you really wanted another chance?”
“What do you mean?” I countered.
Ever so quietly, without histrionics, the warden told me I knew very well what he meant (and I did). He asked me what I was trying to prove, if anything. He told me he knew what I was, but he wasn’t certain why. That, he admitted, was what troubled him, even at times baffled him, and not because he was especially concerned with what happened to me, but because of the larger implications and the fact there were so many of my kind. He observed I had carried what could only be interpreted as defiance to its absolute extreme, however refined my technics for doing so. I had used every last ounce of brain power, cunning and cleverness I possessed in doing so. Why? How did that make sense? I hadn’t been deterred by punishment or fear of punishment. Not even the threatened and imminent loss of my life had seemed to have had any effect on me. Why not?
Did I think he enjoyed putting men to death? If I did I had better have my head examined, and that might be a good idea anyway. Society and its institutions were admittedly not perfect. But neither was I. The difference was society was continually trying to improve. I wasn’t. I was willing to stand off and sneer and exploit and sabotage. I was ioo per cent negative and always looking for some angle, for some way to “beat” the system or belittle it. The tragedy was that I’d been so successful.
Did it ever occur to me, sermonizing aside, that it also takes guts to be honest? That if I’d spent one-half the time on the outside trying to do something useful with my life that I’d spent here on the Row ostensibly merely trying to save it I would have been successful in a much more satisfying and constructive way? Didn’t I realize that a man’s brains and skills and talents can be put to both a personal and socially acceptable use?
I had spent a life in crime, in prisons, outside the law. I seemed, deep down, to hate society and all it stood for. Why? There had to be a reason. And if there was a reason why was I afraid to tell it? Because I knew it was too childish? I had spent years on the Row, and I said it (and “legal execution”) was no answer. All right, then what was the answer?
Did I ever stop to think that my own actions and conduct helped convince the public of the very things I said were all wrong? That I was making his job difficult? That his job was to try to help men?
The warden paused. Then, in a still quiet and calm voice, he said: “If you have the guts, Caryl, now you can make some sense out of your life and do something with it to repay Judge Stephens for the chance he’s given you.”
“Oh, sure,” I said, smiling faintly. “But what?”
“Figure it out for yourself,” he told me. He turned and walked away.
I dropped the copy of the stay order onto the typing stand. I lit a cigarette.
Figure it out for yourself. Declaratory not exclamatory. Figure it out for yourself. Figure it out for yourself.
I won’t dress it up. I’ll tell it in hard, clear words.
Here were the after-midnight hours, and a brooding quiet shrouded the Row. I awoke suddenly, and found myself staring at the walls and bars of my cell. They seemed to encase me like an insensate womb of death.
“Hell,” I thought, “that’s not metaphor, Chessman; that’s cold fact!” I grinned, cursed, threw myself out of bed, kicked into my slippers and put on my bathrobe. Then I fumbled a cigarette out of a pack and lit it, inhaling smoke deeply into my lungs. I don’t believe I had ever felt more wide awake or more strangely calm in my whole life than I felt at that moment.
I glanced at the clock outside the cell. The time was a few minutes past one. Wednesday, June 25, 1952. My 1453d night on Death Row. More than 35,000 hours. Almost one-eighth of my life.
A few hours earlier—fifteen to be exact—San Quentin’s Warden Harley Teets had brought me a copy of the stay of execution of my death sentences. The stay order would continue in effect at least until the Court of Appeals heard and decided my appeal from the Federal District Court’s denial of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus I had filed, seeking to have my convictions set aside.
The stay came as a jolting surprise in a way. And it meant, in my life, that Friday would be just another day, not the end of the world. It meant I could still win in the courts—and work, work, work, against two hundred to one odds. But I didn’t mind the work and I wasn’t troubled by the odds. What troubled me was the warden’s question— where was the sense of Caryl Chessman? How did I account for myself?
I paced the floor and thought about the day’s happenings. Gradually the pieces began to fall into place. Slowly I found it possible to see my condemnation in terms larger than my own predicament. It was indisputably true that places like Death Row made sense only because people like myself didn’t.
No man, I am sure, likes to feel his life has been completely wasted. Conversely, I am equally sure that every man wants to believe his time spent here on earth has been of some importance both to himself and to others. When one man turns against his fellows, there is a reason. When that man rebels and defies and hates, there is a reason. When he reaches the point where he believes in nothing, there is a reason. Most if not all of his fellows suspect this, but often the reason is buried, hidden in a dark corner of his mind and when he turns openly against them what he does seems to them unfathomable. They become piqued and they seek to force him to mend his ways by punishing him. When this fails and he reacts with increased hostility and violence, they have legal machinery to destroy him. And when he is destroyed, they say they have avenged themselves against a social evil. In a way they have. But—
I knew these men who turned against their fellows. I was one of them. On my record, I was one of the worst of them, notwithstanding a good intelligence, an excellent education, many valuable occupational skills, perfect health. I had lived defiantly and recklessly, without regard for my own life or safety.
I had been brought to the Row and then had spent four rugged, ugly years here, aggressively fighting for my life, and yet paradoxically giving the impression I did not give a damn about it or anything. From all surface indications, I appeared determined to go to Hell, but equally determined to get there in my own way, on my own terms and at my own good time.
I have told here the story of my life for the first time, and my purpose in telling it is not to try to justify or to excuse what I have done. Perhaps my actions cannot be justified. They perhaps cannot be excused. But surely they can be understood, and a large social significance derived from them.
The story, in my opinion, clearly and forcefully demonstrates this important fact: The ultimate development of an antisocial personality is invariably the end result of the impact of powerfully felt extrinsic forces upon the young mind, spirit or soul (call it what you will).
As well, I believe the story demonstrates, with equal force and clarity, the fact that even those who, as adu
lts, violently menace society do not spring full grown from Hell. They are a result of a complex called environment. They were young once, and something happened to them. They gave and give society ample warning of what to expect. The danger signals are always flashed.
The young are eager and alive. They are idealists, yes, and romantics. They hunger emotionally. They need love. They need to feel wanted; they want to belong. But reality can treat them harshly, cruelly. Fear can enter their lives, a fear that is ugly and unreasonable. They can develop terrible feelings of guilt, of inadequacy, of being unloved, unwanted, rejected, alone. They can feel tyrannized. They can become confused. They can rebel, and their rebellion can assume many shapes. It can carry them many places. It can carry them into a jungle world and give them a cause—crime.
That is when they need help and guidance most, but they cannot be helped and guided unless they are understood. And they cannot be understood unless someone they respect takes the time and spends the effort to determine the actual reason for their rebellion. To be sure, they should and must be disciplined, yet at the same time they should and must be made to understand the need for self-discipline. What’s more, the idea that someone exercising an authority over them, whether parent, teacher, preacher, judge, reform-school supervisor or whoever, can scold, lecture, frighten or force them into being “good,” which usually means no more than blind, submissive obedience to authority’s will, is simply a fallacy. But authority—and society —seems to be infatuated with the idea anyway.
Yes, in a sense, I became a criminal and an outlaw by choice, but that doesn’t detract from the fact there was a reason. When a youngster, whether with justification or not, I reached the point where I believed it was better to be anything than afraid. I gladly traded fear for guile and hate. My psychopathy became a shield, and the more those in authority tried to hound or pound it out of me, never attempting to learn why it was there in the first place, the thicker I built its walls.