Criminal lawyers have adopted stalling tactics in the court system for capital punishment prisoners. These prisoners aren’t charged any money by these shyster lawyers as they don’t have any money in most cases.
The lawyers do this for nothing in most cases in order to get a reputation for their ability to stall death sentences. This stalling tactic benefits the prisoner on death row, but appeals over years deludes the death sentence fear.
Caryl Chessman the Red Light Bandit
Now I’m going to bring in Caryl Chesman, the Red Light Bandit, to give you an idea how an idea how criminal lawyers learn from his tactics of stalling with appeals, and how the law allows the use of filing many Habeas Corpus’s.
Caryl Chessman finally went to the gas chamber at San Quentin Prison on May 2 1960.
This should be altered, but Congress woefully isn’t doing its elected job. Murderers convicted and sentenced to death should be executed quickly, within the first year, and not over 2 years.
Chessman’s Early Life
Chessman was born Carol Whittier Chessman in Saint Joseph, Michigan in May 27, 1921, the only child of Hallie Lillian Cottle and Serl Whittier Chessman, both devout Baptists. (Carol was, at the time, a popular name for boys of Danish descent, but Chessman later changed the spelling himself to Caryl).
In 1922, the family relocated to Glendale, California. Chessman’s father became despondent after failing at each of a series of jobs, and attempted suicide twice, and in 1929 Chessman’s mother was paralyzed as the result of a car accident.
As a child, Chessman battled asthma, which left him weak, and he also contracted encephalitis, which he later claimed changed his personality. After recovering, he began to rebel against his parents’ strict Baptist upbringing by committing petty crimes.
The family was hit hard by the Depression, and Chessman later recalled that he stole food and other items as an adolescent to help his parents. During his teen years the stealing continued.
In July 1937, Chessman was caught stealing a car and sent to Preston School of Industry (also known as Preston Castle), a reform school in Northern California. He was released in April 1938, only to return a month later after stealing another car.
After his release from the road camp he joined the gang and, in April 1941, was arrested in connection with a number of gang-related robberies and shootouts with police.
In October 1939, Chessman was sent to the Los Angeles County Road Camp after yet another car theft. It was there that he met a group of young criminals known as the “Boy Bandit Gang”.
As the gang’s leader, Chessman was convicted of robbery and sent to San Quentin State Prison, then transferred to the California Institution for Men in Chino. He escaped in October 1943 but was arrested a month later.
Convicted on another robbery charge, Chessman was sentenced to five years to life and served the minimum, mostly at Folsom State Prison. He was released in December 1947 and returned to Glendale.
Chessman As the Red Light Bandit
In January 1948, a number of robberies and thefts were reported throughout the Greater Los Angeles Area. On January 18, a man driving a car described as a 1947 Ford coupe used a red light to stop a vehicle near Malibu Beach.
The unsuspecting vehicles occupants were robbed by the man using a 45 caliber gun. Later that day a second couple was robbed in the same red light manner near the Rose Bowl. Police quickly began to suspect a certain criminal, then the Los Angeles newspapers dubbed the suspect “The Red Light Bandit”.
Another incident occurred January 19, as a third couple was robbed as they sat parked on a hill in West Pasadena, and the woman, Regina Johnson, was forced to had to perform oral sex on her assailant.
January 22, a fourth couple returning home from a church dance was pulled over on Mulholland Drive. The woman, 17-year-old Mary Alice Meza was dragged from the vehicle by the assailant.
The offender drove Meza to a secluded area where he forced her to engage in oral and anal sex. Her boyfriend then drove away and was pursued by the assailant unsuccessfully.
The following day, police in North Hollywood attempted to stop a 1946 Ford coupe matching the description given by Meza and her boyfriend, and also by witnesses to a robbery at a clothing store in Redondo Beach earlier that day.
But a high-speed chase occurred and the vehicles occupants, Chessman and David Knowles, were captured and arrested. A 72-hour interrogation concluded in which Chessman confessed to the “Red Light Bandit” crimes.
He was also positively identified by the rape victims, Regina Johnson and Mary Alice Meza. In late January 1948 Chessman was indicted on 18 counts of robbery, kidnapping, and rape
After a three-week trial in May, he was convicted on 17 of the 18 counts, [9] and was sentenced to death but his conviction was reversed on appeal in 1950 due to an absence of direct incriminating evidence, and “impermissible abuse of the law”. Chessman’s accomplice, David Knowles was tried and convicted as an accessory in the store robberies.
Chessman’s 12 Years of Stalling his Execution with Appeals
For nearly twelve years on death row Chessman filed dozens of appeals, in the roll as his own attorney, he successfully avoided eight execution deadlines, many times by a few hours. His appeals were well crafted, you wonder how a man with this much knowledge could of committed his convicted crimes, uncaring ruthlessness.
The Little Lindbergh Law was a death penalty offense. At the time, under California’s version of the “Little Lindbergh Law”, a crime that involved kidnapping with bodily harm could be considered a capital offense.
Two of the counts against Chessman alleged that he dragged Johnson 22 feet from her car before demanding oral sex, and that he abducted Meza against her will, driving her a considerable distance before raping her.
The court ruled that both actions fit the law’s definition of kidnapping with bodily harm, thus making Chessman eligible for the death penalty under the law. The law was repealed by the time his trial began but was in effect at the time of the crimes; the repeal was not applied retroactively.
Chessman also took his case to the public through letters, essays and books. His four books, Cell 2455, Death Row (1954), Trial by Ordeal (1955), The Face of Justice (1957) and The Kid Was a Killer (1960), became bestsellers.
He sold the rights to Cell 2455, Death Row, to Columbia Pictures, which in 1955 they made a film with the same name. It was directed by Fred F. Sears, with William Campbell as Chessman.
The manuscript of his fourth book, The Kid Was a Killer, was seized by San Quentin warden Harley O. Teets in 1954 as a product of “prison labor”. It was eventually returned to Chessman in late 1957, and published in 1960.
Again you have to wonder how Chessman could have had the ability to have of written four books with his offensive heartless crimes. I went back a long ways to bring this story to you, but I wanted to replay how he did open the door for delay in the legal system against capital punishment.
Caryl Chessman finally went to the gas chamber at San Quentin Prison on May 2 1960. It is common practice for criminal lawyers to keep filing appeals for a prisoner on death row, that isn’t questionable.
But a law has to be passed to have quick executions. Justice has to be carried out in respect of the victim. Allowing a prisoner sentenced to death to remain for years isn’t getting a message, quick justice, for breaking the law on murder.
With California’s 700 prisoners on death row it doesn’t look like much of a deterrent. Capital punishment isn’t a hundred percent effective, but it is a deterrent that will keep murder to a minimum.