Overview

Tell Rosalie I said goodbye. It's all right. Caryl Chessman's last words, on May 2, 1960, were for Rosalie Asher, a Sacramento attorney who had spent more than a decade fighting to save him from execution. Just ten minutes earlier, she'd lost one last legal battle at the California Supreme Court - and Chessman was put to death in the San Quentin penitentiary gas chamber.Since 1948, nine different execution dates had been set. Stays were granted seven times, permitting new appeals at the very last minute, and on the eighth appeal, Governor Edmund G. Brown offered a reprieve. Chessman, 38 years old at the time of his death, had spent more than twenty years behind bars.Still, not five minutes before he entered the death chamber, Chessman insisted to Warden Fred Dickson that they had the wrong man - he wasn't the Red Light Bandit who had kidnapped and sexually abused two young women in Los Angeles in January, 1948. Chessman had been convicted of 17 felonies, but the counts of kidnapping and sexual abuse earned him a death sentence.

Full Product Details

9781973756248

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Tab Content 6

Countries Available