Rebel and a Cause 2001027614, 1098765432

Citation preview

Rebel and a

Cause

Caryl Chessman and the Politics of the Death Penalty in Postwar California, 1948-1974 THEODORE HAMM

Rebel and a Cause

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THEODORE HAMM

Rebel and a Cause

Caryl Chessman and the Politics of the Death Penalty in Postwar California, 1948-1974

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY

LOS ANGELES

LONDQ^^

Photos on title page courtesy of AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © zooI by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hamm, Theodore, 1966Rebel and a cause : Caryl Chessman and the politics of the death penalty in postwar California, 1948-1974 / Theodore Hamm, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-5Z0-Z24Z7-Z (alk. paper)—isbn 0-52022428-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) I. Chessman, Caryl, 1921-1960. 2. Capital punishment— California—History—20th century. 3. Death row inmates—California. 1. Title. HV8699.U5 H363 2001 364.66'o9749'o9045—dczi 2001027614

Printed in the United States of America 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 1098765432,1 The paper used in this publication meets the mini¬ mum requirements of ansi/niso Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

For Mom and Jill

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Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

I.

i

The Antithesis of Reform

ii

z. The Sex Crimes of the Red Light Bandit (1948-1954)

38

3. The Rehabilitation of a Criminal “Genius” (1954-1960)

66

4. A Tale of Two Protests (1950-1960)

92

5. Chessman’s Ghost (1960-1974)

135

Conclusion: 1974 and Beyond

162

Notes

169

Index

205

/

Acknowledgments

When this study first took shape in the mid-1990s, I was fortunate to spend an afternoon with Rosalie T. Asher, Chessman’s attorney for nearly eleven years. While Rosalie is sure to disagree with some of my conclu¬ sions, I sincerely thank her for inspiring me to pursue the case. I was lucky to have not one but two exemplary Ph.D. advisers at the University of California, Davis. It was from Michael L. Smith that I first learned the ins and outs of California history, and every step of the way he has brought his customary wit, generosity, and razor-sharp intellect to this project. Meanwhile, it was in the first-year seminar I took with Clarence Walker that I first learned the rules of the game. Ever since, Clarence has been a first-rate critic as well as a very good friend. Also at Davis, I give special thanks to Jay Mechling, Wilson Smith, Karen Halttunen, Ted W. Margadant, David Brody, Ruth Rosen, Cathy Kudlick, and to the late gentlemen-scholars Paul Goodman and C. Roland Marchand. I also am grateful to the entire department for honoring me with the Reed-Smith fellowship in 1994-95. The history department office there would not survive without the work of Debbie Lyon, Eteica Spen¬ cer, and Charlotte Honeywell, and I owe them a note of thanks as well. A chance library recall first put me in contact with Paula Pass at Berke¬ ley, and she immediately made me feel like a colleague. Especially for this, but no less for her perceptive insights, I am most appreciative. I also benefited greatly from my particip^ion in the California Studies Group, and for this I particularly credit Dick Walker. The Center for Chinese

IX

Acknowledgments

X

Studies at Berkeley might be an odd fit with my resume, but my work stint there was extremely rewarding. Before leaving the Bay Area, I also had the wonderful opportunity to teach in the college program at San Quentin. Started by Professor Naomi Janowitz, the program is now run by my good friend Sean McPhetridge. To these two folks, as well as to the incomparable Vern Griffith, I am deeply in dept. Space prevents me from acknowledging all of my students in the San Quentin Project, so I’ll only single out those with whom I worked most, namely Doug Mickey, Pete Edelbacher, Steven Ainsworth, Prentice Snow, and Armenia Cudjo, capable scholars all. In these days of academic downsizing, I was doubly fortunate to serve as visiting assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, Am¬ herst, in the spring of 1998. I can’t say enough about the support pro¬ vided by Mary Wilson, Kathy Peiss, David Glassberg, Bruce Laurie, and the rest of the faculty and staff there. The graduate students in my “Race, Politics and Culture since 1930” seminar, in particular Leo Maley and Jeff Balfour, also helped make the semester extremely worthwhile. Since moving to New York, I have had the great pleasure of getting to know Danny Walkowitz, and I have benefited repeatedly from his constant sup¬ port and always trenchant scholarly advice. My undergraduate advisor at Rutgers, Michael Rockland, has returned to become a trusted mentor at a different stage, and to him, too, I am extremely grateful. To Leslie Fishbein and the rest of the American studies department at Rutgers, and to Betts Brown and the entire metropolitan studies program at NYU, I say thanks for keeping me intellectually as well as financially afloat. Innumerable libraries made this study possible. Most prominently, I am grateful to the library staff at Davis; the Bancroft Library; the Cali¬ fornia State Library; the California State Archives; Swarthmore College; the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; and the Tamiment Li¬ brary at NYU. Similarly, I owe a note of appreciation to Tony Platt, who graciously allowed me to make use of his personal library of criminology texts. At UC Press, I am indebted to Monica McCormick for making this project happen, and to Jean McAneny for bringing it to press. Spe¬ cial thanks to Evan Camfield, for his first-rate job copyediting the manu¬ script. Quite literally, I owe my life to the medical staff at San Francisco General Hospital, who rescued me from a near-fatal bacterial infection in the winter of 1993. In terms of giving life to this particular study, though, I must emphasize my appreciation to the infinite array of people

Acknowledgments

XI

who took time—at cocktail parties, in locker rooms, and everywhere in between—to share their own remembrances of the Chessman case. I saved my friends for next to last, but I trust that this will not be con¬ sidered any sort of slight. From the first day of graduate school orienta¬ tion, Drew Wood and I knew we would be pals forever. Time and again, both he and Monica Barczak have been there when I needed them, and when we just wanted to fire up the bbq. John Logan and I have also been tight since we started at Davis together, and in him and Adriana Craciun I am fortunate to have good friends across the Atlantic. Randolph Lewis and Circe Sturm, meantime, have brought down-home goodness into my life. Among other Davis comrades. Brad Schrager, Carl-Petter Sjovoid, Dave Hendricks, and Amy Patterson top the list. Elsewhere, much re¬ spect goes to Tamara Falicov, and not only for tracking down all of the eclectic Chessman paraphernalia I now own. I can’t thank all my pals in SF, but I will say that Monique Ramos and Mikey Taluc introduced me to most of them. Then there’s all my chums at The Brooklyn Rail, who keep the words flowing. Between my antipodes have been the likes of A1 Reeder and Maddie Soglin; Rayman Nedzel; J. Scott Burgeson; Alberto Gutierrez; Victoria Young and Jonas Salganik; and, of course, Jason Jones. Ask anyone who has visited the Corona or Upland Public Libraries over the past few years and they are likely to tell you how they were as¬ sisted by the kindest, most helpful reference librarians they’d ever met. I am proud as well as grateful that such people are my dad. Bob, and stepmom. Yoga. As a scholar I could do worse than to have such tireless research assistants, and as a son I could hardly ask for more loving par¬ ents. To my in-laws and fellow peregrines. Bill and Dorothy DeVoti, I can only express my amazement at how giving, supportive, and unusually tolerant of an underemployed son-in-law they have been. And it is to them, and Angie, as well as to a few angels above, that I owe thanks for the greatest present of all, namely Emily. Companion in both word and deed, and for life, she has truly been a gift sent directly from Providence. TH Brooklyn, New York 2000

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iti/ ir3> 12.6-Z8, 154-58, 164-66

Prisoners Union, 158 Prison Reorganization Act (1944), zzZ3

Proposition 17 (197Z), 9, 159, 161 public opinion polls, zz, 34, 13Z, 145, 148,151, 154, zoi-zn4o

Quakers, 14, Z5-Z6, 107, 135, 157 See also American Friends Service Com¬ mittee (AFSC)

Ray, Nicholas, 32.-33, 45 Reagan, Edward, 130 Reagan, Nancy, 159 Reagan, Ronald death penalty, advocacy of, 9-10, 137, i49-5i> i54> 159-60, 167, zoozoin34 gubernatorial campaign (1966), 14748, 161 Reagan Revolution, 148-5Z, 165 Rebel Without a Cause (Lindner), 45, 66-67

“red light bandit.” See Chessman, Caryl Reich, Wilhelm, 140 Robinson, Marguerite, 98 Robison, Sofia, 147 Rockwell, George Lincoln, 160 Rogers, J. A., loz Rosenberg, Ethel and Julius, 8, Z9, 34, loi,176046 Ross, Andrew, 8 5 Rossman, Michael, 137, 139, 141 Rothman, David, 18-19 Rothstein, Ida, 97-101 Rudolph V. Alabama, 153 Rumford, Byron, 104 Rush, Benjamin, 15 Sacco, Nicola, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, 8, zz, 38, loi Sampsell, Lloyd, zz, 90, 1Z3 Sands, Bill, 84, 186037 San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, loi San Francisco Interdenominational Min¬ isterial Alliance, 98 Scheer, Robert, 137, 143 Schell, Joseph, 130 Schermerhorn, Frances, 104-5 Schmidt, David, 78 Scottsboro Boys, zz, 41-4Z Scudder, Kenyon J., Z3 Seale, Bobby, 155 Sellin, Thorsten, Z5, 15Z sex criminals linked to homosexuality, 7, 39, 41, 64-65 history of, 40-43 in postwar California, 53-58 “sexual psychopath,” 7, 10, z6, 40, 43-48, 58-6Z

Shaw, Ruth, IZ4 Short, Elizabeth, 48-49, Simon, Jonathan, 19 Simpson, William, 54 Sington, Ferrick, z8, 31 Southern, Terry, 140

53

Index

Spector, Herman K., 70 Steed, Robert, 117 Stewart, Potter, 166 Stroble, Fred, 39 Stroud, Robert F. 87-88 Sutherland, Edwin H. 57 Symington, Muriel, 106

209

Wanger, Walter, 1921134 Warren, Earl 7, 22, 53-54, 98-99, 124 Watson, Tom, 41 Weissich, William, 131 Welch, Joseph, 3 2 Wells, Wesley Robert, 8, 10, 92, 95-107,

Teets, Harley, 131 Thomas, Calvin, 150 Thomas, Trevor, 115, 156-57 Trenton Six, 34 Truehaft, Decca, 98 Turner, Wallace, 14 S

i33-34> 162-63 West, Oswald, 20 Westbrook, Robert 191031 White, Byron, 160 Whittier, John Greenleaf, 3 Winchell, Walter, 104 Wirin, A. L., 108 Withycombe, James, 20 Wright, Erik Olin, 158 Wylie, Phillip, 72

Unitarians, in United Electrical Workers (UE), 104

“yacht bandit.” See Sampsell, Lloyd Yorty, Sam, 146

Waldrot, Frank C., 46 Walkowitz, Daniel, 94

Ziferstein, Isidore, 108, 139 Zimring, Franklin, 9

Teeters, Negley K., 7, 24, 35, 70, 82-

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History / Sociology / Law Theodore Hamm uses the 1960 execution of Caryl Chessman as a springboard for examining how politics and debates about criminal justice became a volatile mix that ignited postwar California. The effects of those years continue to be felt as the staters three-strikes law and expanding prisonconstruction program spark heated arguments over rehabilitation and punishment. Known as the "red light bandit," Chessman stalked lovers' lanes in Los Angeles. Eventually convicted of rape and kidnapping, he was sentenced to death in 1948. In prison he gained sig¬ nificant notoriety os a writer, beginning with his autobiographical Cell 2455 Death Row (1954). In the following years Chessman presented himself not only as an innocent man but also as one rehabilitated from his prior life of crime. He acquired an enthusiastic audience among leading criminologists, liberal intellectuals, and ordinary citizens, many of whom engaged in protests to halt Chessman's execution. Hamm analyzes how Chessman convinced thousands of Californians to support him and why Governor Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, who opposed the death penalty, allowed the execution to go forward. He also demonstrates the intrinsic limits of the popular commitment to the rehabilitative ideal —limits based on race, type of crime, and perceptions of public safety. Hamm places the Chessman case in a broad cultural and historical context, relating it to histories of prison reform, the anti-death penalty movement, the popularization of psychology, and the successive rise and decline of the New Left and the more enduring rise of the New Right. His persuasive analysis is valuable in understanding the symbolic politics behind "law and order" movements not only in California but throughout the United States. "Fast-paced and elegantly crafted, Theodore Hamm's Rebel and a Cause demands our attention. This deft historical analysis of the famous Chessman case and of the entire spectrum of political and cultural struggle surrounding capital punishment should be read by lay people and experts alike. Rigorously researched, superbly argued, this book—unfortunately—becomes all the more relevant with each new execution." — Christian Parenti, author of Lockdown America: Police and Prison in the Age of Crisis "In his crisply written and subtly nuanced study Rebel and a Cause, Theodore Hamm shows how California death row inmate Caryl Chessman became the unlikely flashpoint for a series of pas¬ sionate confrontations between advocates and opponents of the death penalty, as well as between i the New Right, the New Left, and the liberal establishment." — Maurice Isserman, coauthor of America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s Theodore Hamm has written about criminal justice for the Los American Quarterly, and Souls. He currently teaches in the New York University. Cover illustration: "Last Countdown?" Caryl Chessman in prison cell, appearing to loo Courtesy of AP/ WIDE WORLD PHOTOS. Cover design: Steve Jones/plantain studio

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