28. Duffy and Hirshberg, quoted in Adelaide H. Villmoare, “Through the Looking Glass of Teaching: The Death Penalty and the Political Culture of Detached Passions,” Richmond Journal of Law & Public Interest 6(1) (Spring 2001).
29. Quoted in Alan Bisbort, “When You Read This, They Will Have Killed Me”: The Life and Redemption of Caryl Chessman, Whose Execution Shook America (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006), p. 118.
30. Caryl Chessman, San Quentin Extreme Penalty File, #66565, California State Archives, Sacramento.
31. Bisbort, “When You Read This,” pp. 84–85.
32. See, e.g., William J. Kunstler, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt? The Original Trial of Caryl Chessman (New York: William Morrow, 1961); Milton Machlin and William R. Woodfield, Ninth Life (New York: Putnam, 1961), which concluded that Chessman was innocent; and Frank J. Parker, Caryl Chessman: The Red Light Bandit (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1975), which found him guilty.
33. Bisbort, “When You Read This,” chapter 4. See also Theodore Hamm, Rebel and a Cause: Caryl Chessman and the Politics of the Death Penalty in Postwar California, 1948–1974 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
34. Bisbort, “When You Read This,” chapter 5.
35. David Lamson, We Who Are About to Die: Prison as Seen by a Condemned Man (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1935); Bernard Butcher, “Was It Murder?” Stanford Magazine, January–February 2000. The film We Who Are about to Die, directed by Christy Cabanne and starring Preston Foster, is considered one of the classic early movies about prison, death row, and wrongful conviction.
36. Caryl Chessman, Cell 2455, Death Row: A Condemned Man’s Own Story (New York: Permabooks, 1960). The movie of the same title was released by Columbia Pictures. For a discussion of Chessman’s book in the context of prison literature, see Hamm, Rebel and a Cause, pp. 69–75.
37. John Barkham, Syndicated Review, Saturday Review, May 1954.
38. Chessman’s books included Trial by Ordeal (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1955); The Face of Justice (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1957); and The Kid Was a Killer (Greenwich, CT: Gold Medal Books, 1960).
39. Arnaldo Cortesi, “Spare Chessman, Vatican Implores,” NYT, February 19, 1960; “Chessman’s Stay Hailed in Europe,” NYT, February 20, 1960; United Press International, “Demonstrations Planned,” NYT, February 20, 1960.
40. E. W. Kenworthy, “Chessman Uproar Persists in Capital,” NYT, February 21, 1960; C. P. Trussell, “U.S. Scored Anew in Chessman Case,” NYT, February 23, 1960; “Nixon Criticized on Death Penalty,” NYT, February 28, 1960.
41. “Death Penalties Decline in World,” NYT, May 3, 1960.
42. U.S. House, Subcommittee No. 2 of the Committee on the Judiciary, “Abolition of Capital Punishment,” 86th Congress, 2nd Sess. (May 5, 1960), p. 27.
43. Lawrence E. Davies, “Chessman, in a Prison Interview, Sees 50–50 Chance of Clemency,” NYT, May 1, 1960.
44. Lawrence E. Davies, “Caryl Chessman Executed; Denies His Guilt to the End,” NYT, May 3, 1960; quoted from Harold V. Streeter, Associated Press, “Reporter Lets You ‘See’ an Execution,” Wisconsin State Journal, May 3, 1960; Bisbort, “When You Read This,” pp. 359–64.
45. Affidavit of John R. Babcock, April 12, 1992, exhibit 1, vol. 1, Fierro v. Gomez, Plaintiffs’ Trial Exhibits.
46. William L. O’Neill, Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960s (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971), pp. 276–77.
47. Hamm, Rebel and a Cause, pp. 137–44.
48. Homer Bigart, “Eichmann’s Tape Depicts Killings,” NYT, April 20, 1961. See also Eichmann Interrogated: Transcripts from the Archives of the Israeli Police, ed. Jochen von Lang in collaboration with Claus Sibyll, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: Vintage Books, 1984).
49. Homer Bigart, “Eichmann to See Preview of Death-Camp Films,” NYT, May 28, 1961; Homer Bigart, “Eichmann Is Unmoved in Court as Judges Pale at Death Films,” NYT, June 9, 1961.
50. H. R. Trevor-Roper, “‘Eichmann Is Not Unique,’” NYT, September 17, 1961.
51. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil (New York: Viking, 1963).
52. Albert Camus, “Reflections on the Guillotine,” in Resistance, Rebellion and Death, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Modern Library, 1960).
53. Novick, Holocaust in American Life.
54. James W. L. Park, quoted in Gray and Stanley, Punishment in Search of a Crime, p. 128.
55. “Bar Owner Wants to Purchase Death Unit,” (Eugene, OR) Register-Guard, January 14, 1965.
10. THE BATTLE OVER CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
1. Robert M. Bohm, “American Death Penalty Opinion, 1936–1986: A Critical Examination of the Gallup Polls,” in The Death Penalty in America: Current Research, ed. Robert M. Bohn (Cincinnati, OH: Andersen Publishing, 1991), p. 116, table 8.1.
2. Margaret Werner Cahalan, Historical Corrections Statistics in the United States, 1850–1984 (Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Justice, December 1986), p. 18, table 2–7; President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (New York: Avon Books, 1968), p. 352; “Stirrings on Death Row,” Time, April 21, 1967.
3. Like earlier gassings, these executions were not pretty either. An Arizona corrections officer and former Korea combat war veteran who witnessed the execution of Pat McGee on March 8, 1963, later reported it was “one of the most vicious and inhumane acts I have ever witnessed… pure agony,” and said he became a heavy drinker to try to forget it. Affidavit of Carl Behrens, April 15, 1992, exhibit 4, vol. 1, Fierro v. Gomez.
4. “Stirrings on Death Row.”
5. Ibid.; Chaplain Byron E. Eshelman, quoted in Ian Gray and Moira Stanley, A Punishment in Search of a Crime: Americans Speak Out Against the Death Penalty (New York: Avon Books, 1989), p. 154. For more on Mitchell’s execution, see “Mitchell Executed as Pickets March; Controversy Rages over Death Issue,” Chico Enterprise Record, April 12, 1967; “Mitchell Yells, Dies in Gas Cell,” OT, April 12, 1967; “Killer Dies in Gas Chamber; Suicide Try Fails,” Redwood City Tribune, April 12, 1967; “Killer Dies Shouting; Carried to San Quentin Gas Chamber,” SFE, April 12, 1967; “Pleas Fail—Mitchell Goes to Death,” The Independent, April 12, 1967; “Mitchell Is Executed for Killing Officer,” SB, April 12, 1967; “Police Slayer Dies in Gas Chamber: Execution State’s First Since ’63,” LAT, April 13, 1967; “58 Watch Execution of Policeman’s Killer,” SDU, April 13, 1967; “Execution!” Santa Cruz Sentinel, April 13, 1967; “Mitchell Collapses at the Gas Chamber,” SFC, April 13, 1967; “Police Slayer Dies in Gas Chamber,” LAT, April 13, 1967.