(7 of 8)
After the Marathon. Governor Brown called the special session of the state legislature to consider his proposal to abolish capital punishment, but even before the session started, Brown decided that he could not win. The lawmakers were sore at him for "passing the buck," as they grumblingly put it, and a poll showed that sentiment in the legislature was running 4 to 1 against saving Caryl Chessman from the gas chamber. Many legislators felt strongly that Chessman had been escaping justice too long. Facing defeat, Brown decided not to fight, tamely placated fellow Democrats in the legislature by agreeing to let his proposal be channeled through the senate judiciary committee, which was sure to block it.
Last week, though the outcome was already decided, the committee held a marathon 16-hour hearing to listen to witnesses for and against capital punishment. When the final witness wound up his testimony, past midnight, the committee got down to its business, and by a vote of 8 to 7 blackjacked Brown's proposal (amended at the last minute to call for a 3½-year moratorium rather than outright abolition of capital punishment).
The Ninth Life. Brown said he was "deeply sorry" about the outcome. He was "powerless," he said, to take any further action in the Chessman case. "The regular schedule of executions will continue under the constitution and laws of the State of California." Under that schedule Caryl Chessman was notified once again that he would be executed. The date: next May 2.
George Davis, best known of the three lawyers currently working for Caryl Chessman, was still full of plans for trying to save him, including a new appeal based on the claim that Chessman's twelve years under sentence of death constitute "cruel and unusual punishments," in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But Caryl Chessman himself seemed to have little hope for any of the plans. He seemed resigned to playing out his role of martyr to capital punishment. Standing at the barred door of his cell after he got the expected news that the judiciary committee had blocked Brown's proposal, Chessman managed to summon a wry smile. "I have had nine execution dates, and have been spared eight times," he said. "I do not want to be credited with more lives than a cat."
The bitterly anti-Chessman Los Angeles Times thought he might well be. "One atrocious but clever criminal called into question our judicial system and brought discredit to our laws," editorialized the Times. "Then ... he intimidated the Governor of California and drove the timorous U.S. State Department to declare him an international issue. And finally, he beheld the legislature in a session specially called to change the law so that he could be saved from execution . . . What will happen now? They would not change the law for Chessman, but it would be unwise to give odds that he won't beat it again."
* He followed it with two comparatively feeble accounts of his Death Row years, Trial by Ordeal and The Face of Justice, and then a novel, first published in Europe and scheduled for publication in the U.S. next month as Obsession.