When You Read This They Will Have Killed Me: The Life and Redemption of Caryl Chessman, Whose Execution Shook America

by Alan Bisbort

When Caryl Chessman appeared on the cover of Time's March 21, 1960 issue, he was the most famous prisoner in America and arguably the best-known in the world. He not only put a face on the issue of capital punishment, he made one of the most remarkable transformations by any American writer. Through access to the papers and letters of his attorneys, George T. Davis and Rosalie Asher, the unpublished manuscripts and papers held by Joseph Longstreth; reminiscences with those who knew him, like Mr. Davis, Mr. Longstreth, his agent and executor; and country music legend Merle Haggard, the first definitive portrait of the enigmatic Caryl Chessman emerges.

Genres: True Crime

384 pages, Hardcover

First published August 13, 2006

Reviews

[Sparrow .]

The first 164 pages are delightful, then the book peters out like a sitcom in its sixth year. We already know, from the title, its ghastly conclusion, so must we learn every legal maneuver that sustains Chessman on Death Row for 12 years – the longest term ever served at that point (though not terribly long by today’s standards; in California, the average inmate remains on Death Row for 18 years now)? Bizarrely, Bisbort never defines legal terms like “habeas corpus” and “a certeriori” – or summarizes the books Chessman writes, except for his one (posthumous) novel. The stories of how our hero smuggles manuscripts out of his cell are pretty wild, however:

“The writing of The Face of Justice was a monumental struggle against prison restrictions, requiring physical stamina, emotional strength, sharp wits and courage… Seldom has an American author faced such odds against seeing a book in print…

“Chessman’s writing regimen for The Face of Justice was as follows: During the day he paced his cell, mentally outlining the book. At night, from eight in the evening until four in the morning, he rode by longhand with a ballpoint pen on a legal pad. From four to six, he copied all he’d written in shorthand, sprinkling each page with legal jargon, signs and symbols (e.g., “SupCt No. 117963”). “After transcribing his work in the shorthand, he tore up the longhand pages and flushed each one down the toilet [”With patience I soon could tear a paper without making a sound.”] At six, as the new day on the row clattered into action, he stopped work. After two or three hours of sleep, he was sometimes yanked from his cot so that his cell could be searched top to bottom for contraband writings. Under such conditions, hiding a manuscript in the usual places was futile. Thus, Chessman hid his manuscript in plain sight, among his legal papers. With the camouflage of legal jargon and indecipherable squiggles of Pitman shorthand, the guards didn’t suspect these ‘legal papers’ were actually the manuscript of The Face of Justice.”

This was before the Son of Sam Law, so Caryl could get rich from his books – though, in fact, he spent almost all the money on lawyers, to stave off death. (The gas in the gas chamber is basically the same gas Hitler used on Jews, Roma, homosexuals, Communists.)

Chessman was a real life James Dean, whose (rather brief) crime sprees were a pugnacious rebuke to “straight” society – though, curiously, he mostly robbed criminals: bookies and brothels (which may have been his undoing; crooked cops were tied in with these operations, and determined to protect them). His pious mother and luckless father were cartoons of downtrodden, “invisible” Americans whose lives collapsed in 1940s LA.

Like A Boy Named Sue, Chessman’s problems may have begun with his effeminate first name.

Nomen est omen, as my father says – “the name is the game (literally, in this case).” Chessman played a game of chess with the law for years, and made a brave stand, before he was checkmated. (Supposedly, he had a genius IQ.)

I always suspected that Eldridge Cleaver, who, like Chessman, became a writer at San Quentin, was the beneficiary of an excellent library. This book confirms that suspicion. (At one time, the prison had a debating team, which traveled throughout California, sometimes beating the Stanford University club.)

At what point did prison begin to culturally decline? When TV sets were placed in every cell.

[Lauren · Rating 1 out of 5]

It wasn't that interesting; it reads more like a textbook than a true crime story, which disappointed me. It mainly discussed how Chessman's case tied up the California legal system for twelve years, which I thought took up an unnecessary amount of time, instead of focusing on how his punishment was unnecessarily cruel and unusual and didn't fit his crime and how he became a bestselling author despite the fact that he was in prison.

I don't really recommend it unless you're a law student.

[Tom Mueller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Injustices perpertrated on Caryl Chessman by the California justice system; includes extensive bibliography. See titles by Caryl Chessman.