Cell 2455, Death Row

by Caryl Chessman

  With rare exception, the newly arrived condemned man does not want to die, at least not consciously. At least not in the gas chamber. At least not today, or tomorrow. Yet he finds himself suddenly thrust into a nightmarish microcosm where the spectre of death is all around him. He learns the man celling next to him has but two weeks to live. His first Thursday afternoon here he watches three burly guards march one of his neighbors off to his death. He reads in the newspapers that still another condemned man’s death sentence has been upheld on appeal.

  He realizes then he is up against a deadly serious proposition. He is jarred, abruptly, into full realization why he is here—to die!

  Sure, the Row makes the doomed man think; it wakes him up—when it’s too late.

  And it does even more: it incites in the mind of the young rebel, the psychopath, a hate. A terrible hate diat he turns against himself and his kind. For Authority is constantly threatening him widi the Row, holding it over his head. And he fights back at that threat with a vicious, destructive anger.

  He says, as I did: To hell with the Row, the gas chamber! He “proves” society can’t extort submissive conformity.

  Admittedly, he’s as hard to “cure” as he is easy to recognize. And quite a few of his kind are clever chameleons who, once imprisoned, give every indication of having responded to a correctional training and treatment program only so they can win release and continue, on an increasingly more violent scale, their personal war against society.

  Failing to understand the nature of their destructive affliction, the public is often so angered by the seeming senselessness of their violent conduct diat it clamors for revenge and thinks hotly in terms of fighting them. But you do not kill cancer by killing, angrily fighting or severely punishing those found to be afflicted with diis dread disease, and so neidier do you kill the causes of an even more dreadful social malady by waging a war against those suffering from it.

  Rather, you seek out, determine and if possible eliminate the causes of the disease, not its victims. And at the same time your goal must also be to evolve a way effectively to treat and help the afflicted.

  All diis, of course, is a job for specialists. Effectively helping the “criminal psychopath,” as well as all other men committed to their custody and care, is a job specialists in California’s Department of Corrections (and other state and federal correctional agencies) have tackled. It’s about as tough a job as can be undertaken, and one requiring the full cooperation and understanding of the public.

  As well as any other human being, I know the enormity of that job. I know what it means to be eaten spiritually away, to hate and doubt and fight and sneer.

  Not too long ago I was told, “Chessman, nothing can cure you but a pound of cyanide.”

  I grinned. “Thank you, Sigmund Freud.”

  That is how indifferent and sardonic you can get.

  But there are periods of self-doubt and times when you know yourself for what you really are—an angry, hating, fighting failure. Usually then you curse your doubt and blaspheme the imagery of the self you see. A voice from within tells you not to waste time mocking yourself but to continue on your merry way to Hell. However, circumstances can combine in such a way that you refuse to heed the voice any longer. You fiercely resolve you will find a way to liberate yourself from the Thing that subjugates you.

  The Thing is psychopathic bondage.

  It is now late winter ot the year 1954. Many months have passed since my appointment with the executioner was last suspended and I began work on my book. Much—more than half—of that time has necessarily been spent in litigating the case, in fighting all the while tor survival. For the “race for life,” the deadly competition with the executioner has continued without letup. Still, every minute I could spare, beg, borrow or steal from the legal work I have employed to write this book.

  Prohibitive odds once again insist, and now more clamorously than evei, that I soon will be put to death in San Quentin’s gas chamber. But odds don’t tell the story, and odds can lie.

  On Thursday, May 28, 1953, one day following my thirty-second birthday, the United States Court of Appeals decided the appeal by upholding the District Court’s summary denial of my petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

  This was bitterly disappointing news.

  Apparently I had been asking too much. It was obvious the federal courts had adopted and were adhering to a strict “Hands off!” policy.

  From June to November—five more months of careful planning, endless research, writing and rewriting.

  The petition was filed.

  And then . . . the Supreme Court slammed the door in my face for the fourth time.

  I filed the necessary application for what is called a further stay of mandate.

  Next, I prepared and mailed to the Supreme Court an application for extension of time from December 29, 1953, to January 15, 1954, to file the petition for rehearing.

  That petition was granted.

  The petition for rehearing was denied. My stay was terminated. Another date for execution will soon be fixed.

  I refuse to throw in the sponge. I still hope to survive. I intend to keep fighting until I win or until the gas chamber door slams shut in my face. Accordingly, I have never for an instant stopped digging for evidence, for ammunition. I am prepared to start all over again back in a lower state court with a new proceeding, a new legal attack.

  Failing altogether in the courts, I would like to ask the governor for executive clemency. I think that I am now worth more to society alive than dead. The long years lived in this crucible called Death Row have carried me beyond bitterness, beyond hate, beyond savage animal violence. Death Row has compelled me to study as I have never studied before, to accept disciplines I never would have accepted otherwise and to gain a penetrating insight into all phases of this problem of crime that I am determined to translate into worthwhile contributions toward ultimate solution of that problem. This book is a beginning contribution; I would like to believe that it also signals the beginning for me of a journey back from outer darkness. Yet I realize that I may well be out beyond the point of no return.

  I should add most emphatically that I thank myself alone for my plight; I certainly don’t blame the courts or the governor for it. Obviously the courts didn’t invent Caryl Chessman, the “psychopath” with the violent criminal past. They only dealt with him—a man, they were repeatedly warned, who was cunning, sinister, dangerous, and who, it seemed, gave not a damn for courts or society or anyone or anything, his articulate protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. Talk is cheap, and claims of innocence are no novelty. A Chessman waiting to die, a Chessman confronted with the imminence of death, a Chessman bent upon cheating the executionei and who can do so only with the aid of some court—isn’t such a Chessman apt to make any claim he believes will serve his ends? Can’t such claims be conveniently ignored, brushed aside, in the interests of justice?

  And Chessman—this Chessman with which the courts have been dealing for these many years—he is but one of a constantly growing criminal horde. Isn’t it possible that his execution will serve as a grim deterrent to the others? That it will serve a useful purpose?

  No, it isn’t possible; it isn’t remotely possible. His execution will deter no one, it will gain society nothing, it will prove nothing. It will simply mean that he will be dead and that, in his case, the problem he typifies has been evaded. That will leave us right back where we started, with a corpse, a liquidated half-million-dollar investment, and at least two more recruits to the criminal ranks ready and eager to take the dead Chessman’s place.

  You can hardly call that progress, can you?

  All right, then let’s meet head-on the problem of our Chessmans. Let’s see if there isn’t something constructive we can do about them.

  Let’s recognize that the personal fate of Chessman may not be of importance to anyone but Chessman himself. But let’s recognize that the thousands of youngsters following
in the footsteps of Chessman are of prime importance to all of us.

  So there is a little more, a little more than just the life of a man about to die; more than a tale of blazing guns, screaming tires, reform-school educations, and the plop! in the pan beneath my final chair.

  The winter day outside is gray. A driving rain lashes the barred windows. Gusts of wind vent their strange fury against the building.

  It’s late afternoon and outside it is beginning to turn dark. The face of Death Row is a scowling, brooding face.

  Night soon will be here. For me, it may be a night that will never end.

  Does that matter?

  Do your Chessmans matter?

  The decision is yours.

  THE END