adversary.
All questions must be answered. There is no Fifth Amendment. The defendant must
answer the questions. The tangled mind is also part of the search. America's
law is an outgrowth of trial by combat, with lawyers as champions and judges
making sure the rules of combat are followed. Each system has its virtues and
its flaws, but I do think the Napoleonic Code more efficient, fairer and, as a
result, it produces more truth. As for justice, who knows what that is? I have
violated many laws, but if there was a God of Justice, I am unsure what would
happen if He put what I did on one end of the scale and what was done to me on
the other. At the sentence the judge suspended proceedings, placed me on five
years' probation with the first ninety days to be served in the county jail. A
condition of the probation was that I undergo psychiatric treatment under Dr
Frym at the Hacker Clinic in Beverly Hills.
Hip, hip, hooray! In spring I would walk from the Hall
of Justice onto Broadway. I would be free, and we would see what was writ on
life's next page. I wasn't about to start fretting over liabilities, real or
fancied, societal or psychological. I lived in the momentary impulse.
A day or two after my sentence,
while I was waiting for the Sheriff's Department to classify me, word came from
the booking office. "Chessman's down from the row for a hearing." The
news excited the ex-cons and professional criminals in the tank. His quixotic
battle through the courts, which had just started, added to his already
substantial underworld legend. His book, Cell 2455
Death Row had not yet been published but he was already famous, or
infamous, in San Quentin and Folsom and in all of the Southern California
newspapers. Within the hour, a deputy came down the tier, pushing a handcart on
which were several cardboard boxes. Chessman's legal materials. He had
"orders" from the court, and the Sheriff's Department got heightened
blood pressure when a court ordered them to do anything. He was sentenced to the
gas chamber for a series of small time robberies and sexual assaults along
Mulholland Drive. He was dubbed the "Red Light Bandit" because
victims were pulled over with a red light. It was probably just the red cellophane
over the spotlight that many cars had back then. He claimed, and most criminals believed, that the LAPD had
framed him while knowing he was innocent, or at least messed with the evidence.
He had been a thorn in their side for many years. He had once heisted illegal
casinos and bordellos that the Sheriff's Department let operate in the hills
above the Sunset Strip. It did seem unlikely that someone who did that would
turn around and commit nickel and dime robberies and vicious rapes. I believed
him innocent. Had I thought otherwise, I would never have talked to him. My
moral code didn't allow fraternization with rapists and child molesters.
Chessman had been called down for a hearing on the veracity
of the trial transcript, the document used by the California Supreme Court —
and all subsequent courts — to determine exactly what went on moment by moment
in the long trial, where he had represented himself. Al Matthews was appointed
as his advisor. The court reporter had used shorthand, not a machine, which was
immaterial as long as he prepared the transcript. Alas, he died part way
through the job and Chessman complained that the reporter who took over made
errors critical to the appeal. That one issue would keep him alive a dozen
years, but he never got another trial. Back then, a direct appeal to the California
Supreme Court took about a year to eighteen months between the judgment and the
cyanide, sometimes less. At two years, Chessman was already beating the
averages.
The crimes he supposedly committed went as follows: A car
with a red light pulls up to a parked couple looking out at the clusters of
lights in the bowl of the San Fernando Valley. A figure gets out. He comes over
to the car. He has a gun. He robs them and
All questions must be answered. There is no Fifth Amendment. The defendant must
answer the questions. The tangled mind is also part of the search. America's
law is an outgrowth of trial by combat, with lawyers as champions and judges
making sure the rules of combat are followed. Each system has its virtues and
its flaws, but I do think the Napoleonic Code more efficient, fairer and, as a
result, it produces more truth. As for justice, who knows what that is? I have
violated many laws, but if there was a God of Justice, I am unsure what would
happen if He put what I did on one end of the scale and what was done to me on
the other. At the sentence the judge suspended proceedings, placed me on five
years' probation with the first ninety days to be served in the county jail. A
condition of the probation was that I undergo psychiatric treatment under Dr
Frym at the Hacker Clinic in Beverly Hills.
Hip, hip, hooray! In spring I would walk from the Hall
of Justice onto Broadway. I would be free, and we would see what was writ on
life's next page. I wasn't about to start fretting over liabilities, real or
fancied, societal or psychological. I lived in the momentary impulse.
A day or two after my sentence,
while I was waiting for the Sheriff's Department to classify me, word came from
the booking office. "Chessman's down from the row for a hearing." The
news excited the ex-cons and professional criminals in the tank. His quixotic
battle through the courts, which had just started, added to his already
substantial underworld legend. His book, Cell 2455
Death Row had not yet been published but he was already famous, or
infamous, in San Quentin and Folsom and in all of the Southern California
newspapers. Within the hour, a deputy came down the tier, pushing a handcart on
which were several cardboard boxes. Chessman's legal materials. He had
"orders" from the court, and the Sheriff's Department got heightened
blood pressure when a court ordered them to do anything. He was sentenced to the
gas chamber for a series of small time robberies and sexual assaults along
Mulholland Drive. He was dubbed the "Red Light Bandit" because
victims were pulled over with a red light. It was probably just the red cellophane
over the spotlight that many cars had back then. He claimed, and most criminals believed, that the LAPD had
framed him while knowing he was innocent, or at least messed with the evidence.
He had been a thorn in their side for many years. He had once heisted illegal
casinos and bordellos that the Sheriff's Department let operate in the hills
above the Sunset Strip. It did seem unlikely that someone who did that would
turn around and commit nickel and dime robberies and vicious rapes. I believed
him innocent. Had I thought otherwise, I would never have talked to him. My
moral code didn't allow fraternization with rapists and child molesters.
Chessman had been called down for a hearing on the veracity
of the trial transcript, the document used by the California Supreme Court —
and all subsequent courts — to determine exactly what went on moment by moment
in the long trial, where he had represented himself. Al Matthews was appointed
as his advisor. The court reporter had used shorthand, not a machine, which was
immaterial as long as he prepared the transcript. Alas, he died part way
through the job and Chessman complained that the reporter who took over made
errors critical to the appeal. That one issue would keep him alive a dozen
years, but he never got another trial. Back then, a direct appeal to the California
Supreme Court took about a year to eighteen months between the judgment and the
cyanide, sometimes less. At two years, Chessman was already beating the
averages.
The crimes he supposedly committed went as follows: A car
with a red light pulls up to a parked couple looking out at the clusters of
lights in the bowl of the San Fernando Valley. A figure gets out. He comes over
to the car. He has a gun. He robs them and
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