Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade (10 page)

Al Matthews came to see me. I had no money, but he said he
would handle my preliminary hearing and have it expedited to the Superior
Court. There he would seek to be appointed by the judge in lieu of the public
defender's office. He said he would try to waive a jury trial and have the case
tried in front of the judge without the jury.

It went just as he planned. He made no attempt to refute the
charges, although the victim said he had few stitches and didn't even miss a
day of work. What Matthews did was to reverse things and put on trial what they
had done to me. He showed the mug photo taken of me when I was booked into the
county jail, then a guard who had quit the Department of Corrections gave
graphic testimony about how they had stomped me. The judge found me guilty, but
what had been done was planted in his mind. A date for a probation hearing and
sentence was set. Al Matthews moved the judge to appoint Dr Marcel Frym of the
Hacker Clinic to examine me and file a report. The judge granted the motion.

Dr Frym an Austrian Jew with jowls that vibrated and an
accent that reeked of intelligence, came to see me. In Vienna he had been a
defense lawyer and had studied under Freud. He was a renowned expert on the
criminal mind. In Vienna, which operated under the inquisitorial system based
on the Napoleonic Code rather than the adversarial system used by nations under
England's sway, the accord's mental condition was extremely relevant. The
charge of the public prosecutor was not to convict, but to find and present
truth to the judge. The philosophical underpinning is to find
truth, not defeat an 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 then makes them perform sexually. In
viewing the situation, I couldn't imagine getting it up if I was either victim
or criminal. When I robbed a bank, my penis usually shriveled up nearly out of
sight.

I was told, never having personally read the transcript, that
he put himself on Death Row when he asked a female victim in

Camillo state hospital some kind of ignorant question
that opened the door to damning testimony. With a decent trial attorney he
would have gotten life which, in those days, made you
eligible
for parole in seven years. I never heard of
anyone doing a first degree murder conviction who did less than fourteen, but
he had no murder, and many with comparable crimes did a dime. In those days,
and in most places around the world, ten years is a long time to serve in
prison, but nowadays, at least here, ten years is the sentence for
misdemeanors, or what should be misdemeanors.

I thought they had deliberately manufactured a case
against Chessman, something I don't believe now. He was guilty. He did it even
though it still seems illogical. His legacy to the justice system is that he is
considered the "jailhouse lawyer." Before Chessman, a convict
carrying legal documents around the yard was either a dingbat or a con man
selling lies to fools. Some prisoners once forged a Supreme Court opinion, and
sold copies on the yard for a carton of cigarettes each — although that was
after
Chessman. The truth is that far fewer would
be imprisoned and/or executed if everyone had one fourth of the prosecution's
resources. We say our system is the best - by what criteria? Do we free the
innocent and punish the guilty better than others? We do all right unless the
guilty are rich, but nobody manages to punish the rich very much. Thank God the
poor commit so many more crimes.

Chessman seemed to swagger when he walked but actually
his stride was the result of an injury in childhood. His hawk-like nose had
been broken; now he had a bent beak. He looked tough but not menacing. I could
hear him unpacking the boxes of papers.

Sampsell: "Chess, you get your typewriter?"

"They got it. They gotta look it over. You know
how that goes?"

"Sure do."

Chessman: "Say, next door."

That was me. "What's up?"

"What'd they say you did?"

"They say I stabbed a guard in Lancaster."

"Oh yeah! I heard about you. You beat the fuck
outta Billy Cook, right?"

I
did the best I could."

"He
deserved it . . . fuckin' turd . . ."

I heard the thud
from the heel of a hand hitting the wall, and Sampsell's voice softer than
usual said, "Hey, Bunk."

"Yeah."

His hand
appeared, reaching out between the bars and in front of the corner of my cell.
He had a kite folded tight. (A "kite" is an unofficial note between
convicts.) I reached out and took it.

"For
Chess," he said.

I pounded on
Chessman's wall. "Hey!" "Yeah."

"Reach
out."

I handed the
note to Chessman. I have no idea what it said, but within a minute, Chessman
called, "Yeah, Lloyd, that's a good idea I'll tell him when I see him. You
got any smokes over there?"

"Sure.
Hey, Bunk."

"Yeah."

"Take
a couple packs and pass this along."

It was a carton
of Camels with one pack missing. I took two and passed the rest to Chessman.
Being accepted by men sentenced to die was bizarrely gratifying. In this dark
world there is nothing more Promethean than attacking a guard. The powers that be
take worse umbrage than merely having an eagle eat the transgressor's liver.
When I said I'd stabbed a guard, the image conveyed to listeners was far
different than the reality.

"You
like to read?" Chessman once asked me.

"Oh
yeah. I'd rather read than eat."

"Maybe for
a little while. Anyway . . . here. Pass 'em along if you're not
interested."

Around the bars
he passed two paperback books, Jack London's
The Sea Wolf
and George
Santayana's
The Last Puritan.
I remember reading Jack London's
Iron
Heel
in the Preston School of Industry. It stood out. I immediately began
to read the tale of Wolf Larsen who lived by beating and stomping and clubbing
his way through any who opposed him, except for his brother,

 who was more feared, and more fearsome, than he.
Their ships prowled the Pacific. When the tank lights went out, I said:
"What a great fuckin' book."

"The Sea-Wolf?"

"Uh huh."

"Jack London was great. They love him in
Russia."

"In Russia!"

"Yeah. He was a communist... or at least some
kind of socialist. He was also a way out racist. It seems almost a paradox ...
a racist commie. Weird, huh?"

"Who's your favorite writer?" I asked.

"You mean this week? That's how much it changes.
You'll get to read a lot of books in the joint."

"I'm not going to the joint." For a moment I
thought he'd forgotten what I'd told him about the probation and jail sentence.

"Oh, not this time, but you went to juvenile hall
at ten, reform school at thirteen, and at sixteen you've been convicted as an
adult. Someday you're going to prison. I just hope you don't wind up next door
to me."

"I'm next door right now."

"I mean next door on Death Row."

The Death House. I saw Cagney's sniveling shadow as he
was dragged to the electric chair. It was a time when executions were so common
that nobody kept count, but it seemed all too likely to me — far more back then
than now. Murder is perhaps the easiest serious felony to get away with. Only
the most stupid and the most impulsive are apprehended and convicted. Only a
fraction of the poorest and most ignorant are among those who go to the Death
House. Fear of the death penalty would not make me hesitate one second now that
I'm old and harmless, my fires of id burned down to ashes. But back when my
rage and defiance always burned near explosion, I was afraid of the gas
chamber.

"It scares me," I told Chessman.

"Shit, it scares me, too. How about you,
Lloyd?"

"Yeah," Sampsell said laconically. "But
it's too late now."

"You got a chance at reversal?" Chessman
asked.

Sampsell's reply was a laugh.

"Me, I think I've got a shot. How can I have a
fair appeal without the right transcript? They hired this reporter after the i
it her one died . . . and where he couldn't decipher the shorthand, he .asked
the fuckin' prosecutor to clarify what was said."

"The prosecutor! How could he do that?"

"Because the judge said he could."

"Fricke?"

"The one and only."

"Does he ever get reversed?"

"I've never seen him reversed. Fricke
On California Criminal Law
is the
numero uno
textbook. How can they reverse the guy
ih.it wrote the book they learned from?"

I listened to them in the jail night after night, two
men who would both be put to death in the small green octagon chamber, where
the cyanide pellets were dipped into acid beneath the chair. They reminisced
about the legends of San Quentin. They mill me about Bob Wells, a black man who
was on Death Row for knocking out a Folsom guard's eye with a spittoon. He
started with a car theft and parlayed it all the way to Death Row. "In the
joint the best thing is to avoid trouble if you can . . . but if you get jammed
and you gotta take somebody out, if you want to avoid the gas chamber or Life,
make sure you stick him in the front — not in the back. In the front you can
make a case for self-defense. Another thing, don't ever go over to his cell
house or his job: You'll be out of bounds . . . where you're not supposed to
be."