It was a cold winter evening in 1960.Caryl Chessman, tall, broad-shouldered, hawk-nosed, sat on the edge of a hard, narrow bed, clenching his fists and biting his lip.He stared at the bare walls of Cell 2455, Death Row, then out through a small, barred window and across the dark waters of San Francisco Bay from San Quentin Prison to the lights of the city.

One-hundred miles north, Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, 32nd governor of California, also sat alone, perched on the edge of an overstuffed arm chair, pudgy, owlish, puffing incessantly on a cigar. He studied the ornate design in the pale green wallpaper that covered the wall of the Victorian parlor of the governor's mansion in Sacramento, agonizing over whether to spare Caryl Chessman from execution the next morning.

Although it's been more than 40 years, the events of that evening, and those immediately preceding and following them, remain among the most important and dramatic in the long history of debate over the heated issue of capital punishment -- a debate reignited by the stunning decision last year by former Illinois Gov. George Ryan to spare all 167 inmates on his state's death row from execution.

Chessman was condemned, not for killing anyone, but under a California law, since repealed, that made "kidnapping for the purpose of robbery, with bodily harm" a capital offense. Two cases were involved, sexual attacks on women the alleged harm cited in both of them.

Chessman insisted he was not guilty, and for almost 12 years up to that evening of Feb. 19, 1960, he had fended off execution through court reprieves granted largely on the basis of his own carefully researched arguments.

Finally, as he faced a seventh appointment in San Quentin's gas chamber, Chessman appealed to the governor for executive clemency that would free him at last from the threat of execution.

Gov. Pat Brown was an avowed foe of the death penalty. But he insisted that Chessman was guilty and that as long as capital punishment was on California's statute books, he had no choice but to "uphold and faithfully execute" the law.

The governor, however, was having second thoughts as he sat staring at that parlor wall in Sacramento. Brown flipped through a stack of petitions, telegrams and letters urging clemency for Chessman. There were thousands of them from all over the world. There was a telephone call in Chessman's behalf from Brown's 22-year-old son Jerry, who would one day also be governor.

Most of all, there was Brown's very troubled conscience. He began "doubting the righteousness" of his position, he later told me and some other reporters privately, now that he was the "one man on God's green earth between another man and death."

After two hours of hard, painful thought, the governor reached a decision.

He could not commute Chessman's death sentence to any lesser penalty. Under California law, that would have required approval of the State Supreme Court, since Chessman had been convicted of more than one felony, and the court previously had voted 4-3 against commutation. But Brown was able to grant Chessman a 60-day reprieve, in the meantime calling the State Legislature into special session to consider his proposal for abolition of the death penalty.

The furor was immediate and fierce. Letters poured into Brown's office at the rate of 1,000 a day, attacking the governor and Chessman in foul, violent language.

Brown's political influence dwindled rapidly, and he backed off on his promise to "do everything within my power" for the abolition proposal. He merely submitted it for the Legislature's consideration. The bill didn't even get out of committee.

Caryl Chessman was executed an May 2, 1960. But though that did not bring about formal abolition of the death penalty, the move for abolition that his long struggle had inspired, and Pat Brown's efforts in launching that movement, eventually had the effect hoped for by Chessman, Brown and the millions of people who supported them.

Few cases were as instrumental in generating the pressure that finally led in 1967 to a virtual moratorium on executions that lasted for nearly a decade in most states, for a quarter-century in California and some others.

One can only hope that former Gov. Ryan's action, inspired in part by Pat Brown's writings deploring the barbarity of the death penalty, will have a similar effect.

There's no more proof now than there was then -- or ever -- that capital punishment is a deterrent, no proof that it is applied fairly regardless of race or class, no proof that it's anything but crude, primitive retribution.

Copyright © Dick Meister