Cell 2455, Death Row: A Condemned Man's Own Story

by Caryl Chessman

Book Overview

In June 1948, 27-year-old petty criminal Caryl Chessman was sentenced in California on two counts of sexual assault, receiving two death sentences as punishment in a case that remains one of the most baffling episodes in American legal history. Maintaining his innocence of these crimes, Chessman lived in Cell 2455, a four-by-ten foot space on Death Row in San Quentin for the twelve years between his sentencing and eventual execution. He spent this...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786718153
• ISBN13: 9780786718153
• Release Date: August 2006
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.6" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Sins of youth!

In spite of the fact this memorable self confessional was written six decades ago, this bold and personal statement about the lives, felonies and times of Caryl Chessman - who lived his own existence according his own codes - facing his existential tenets: a painful childhood, a deep affection for his mother, an ineludible attachment with the hate as driving force, the impossibility of reconciliation with the world, requesting himself over and over the sinister injustice around his environment, the unfruitful efforts for trying to get a good sum of money for helping his mother, his missing illusions as human being; but above all the multiple obstacles he had to avoid, immersed in the complex and sinister labyrinth of the legal jungle, as well as his reflections in San Quentin and how he made all the best he could in order to challenge and defy the juridical instances, questioning himself about the supposed efficiency of the penitential system ( by then, just the 13% of the law transgressions are punished. It's to say, the 87% of the crimes evade the legal fence.) A book of undeniable interest from start to finish, that still arouses special attention of several generations. In its historical times Chessman was the epitome of the resistance, in the fifties - one of the most irreverent decades of the XX century - that knew about the rock culture, the beat generation (Jack Kerouac), the emergence of the dissidence, who found in James Dean his most emblematic icon of the first generation of the Post War who overtly assumed the protest and continuous questioning about the status quo. The historical importance of its absorbing reading will capture your whole attention and will make us to remind Kafka's heinous and dark labyrinths depicted in "The trial."

Interesting

"By the time you read this they will have killed me" is a better read this is pretty much the same info by a different author than Caryl, the man who it is about.

Intelligent and Engaging

Caryl Chessman does an excellent job in this autobiography of an intelligent young man who slips into hate against the system. Beginning in the 1930s, Caryl begins a life of crime that starts with petty theft and grows into shoot-outs with the police and his eventual death sentence. Merle Haggard met him in San Quentin and claims the man was innocent, but Chessman never denies that he was a menace to society. The book presents an indepth and well written look at the criminal mind and the American justice system. This book is well worth reading, but is unfortunately difficult to obtain. I own an old paperback edition, and could not imagine having to pay over $30 to replace it.

A journey to reality

Caryl Chessman takes you with him in his incredible life,he is not looking for any excuse to his crimes, he explains why he became a criminal and what the "system" should do against crime.For the first time you hear the thoughts, the feelings and the opinions of an inmate and when you finish the book you feel that a conversation with that man is something you want. If you are strongly convinced that a death penalty is right, by reading this book you realize that nobody has the right to take a life.

A bone chilling look at a treacherous lifestyle

I opened the book at 7am one day and put it down only 2 times. The fiery true-to-life recollection of prison life seemed to flow from the pages in an eerie Twilight Zone type of way. Caryl Chessman puts life into perspective as he found misfortune and trouble around almost every corner. He highlights most of his antics and pranks that turned eventually for the worse. Escapes and hiding, re-capture and persecution integrated for his lifetime of crime and his final and ultimate punishment. The gas chamber in San Quentin prison. Read this book and see if you don't see a side of Caryl that ultimately could be a step or two away from where you are today.