People v. Chessman

• Decision Date: 07 July 1959
• Docket Number: Cr. 5006
• Parties: PEOPLE of State of California, Respondent, v. Caryl CHESSMAN, Appellant.
• Court: California Supreme Court

Page 679

341 P.2d 679

52 Cal.2d 467

PEOPLE of State of California, Respondent, v. Caryl CHESSMAN, Appellant.

Cr. 5006.

Supreme Court of California, In Bank.

July 7, 1959.

Rehearing Denied Aug. 5, 1959.

Caryl Chessman, in pro. per., for appellant.

Edmund G. Brown and Stanley Mosk, Attys. Gen., Clarence A. Linn, Chief Asst. Atty. Gen., Arlo E. Smith and Preble Stolz, Deputy Attys. Gen., for respondent.

SCHAUER, Justice.

Defendant appeals from judgments of conviction of 17 felonies, rendered pursuant to jury verdicts, and from an order denying his motion for new trial. Upon two counts (kidnaping for robbery with infliction of bodily harm) the punishment was fixed at death. Defendant argues that the trial judge required him to go to trial without opportunity to obtain counsel of his choice, to prepare and to effectively represent himself. He presents contentions as to asserted prejudicial errors of the trial judge and prejudicial misconduct of the prosecuting attorney at the trial on the merits. He attacks the sufficiency and correctness of the reporter's transcript on appeal, and the propriety and constitutionality of proceedings in which that record was produced, settled, and resettled. Defendant further urges that California, since the rendition of the judgments of conviction on June 25, 1948, has denied him equal protection and punished him cruelly and unusually by restraining him pursuant to such judgments while the various matters of which defendant complains were being litigated and relitigated. And he contends that the justices of this court are 'jurisdictionally foreclosed from discharging their duties.' We have concluded that these and his other contentions hereinafter described are without merit.

For convenience in ensuing discussion we again adopt the numbering of the crimes of which defendant was convicted which we employed in People v. Chessman (1951), 38 Cal.2d 166, 171-172, 238 P.2d 1001. Each paragraph indicates, and identifies by date and description, a separate general criminal enterprise, in each of which one or more offenses were committed. Defendant was identified by victims of the various criminal enterprises, except the victim of crime (2).

January 3, 1948: (1) First degree robbery of McCullough, clerk in a store where shoes were sold, by defendant (armed with a .45 caliber automatic pistol) and another man.

January 13, 1948: (2) Grand theft of an automobile with a spotlight. This car was taken in the owner's absence. A car of similar description was used in perpetrating subsequent crimes. Defendant was fleeing in the stolen car when he was apprehended.

January 18, 1948: (3) First degree robbery of Bartle. Bartle and a young woman were driving along the Coast Highway when they were stopped by defendant, who drove a car with a red spotlight which he flashed on Bartle's car. Defendant was armed with a .45 automatic. (The car stolen in crime (2) had a spotlight with a clear rather than a red lens. Defendant himself, as he admitted on cross-examination, introduced a possible explanation of the red spotlight into the proceedings when he asked Bartle, at the preliminary examination, 'Well, had there been some cellophane around the spotlight?' to which Bartle replied, 'That I would not know.')

January 18, 1948: (4) First degree robbery of Ballew, who was parked at an isolated place with a woman companion. Defendant drove up, flashed a red spotlight which was mounted on the car he drove, displayed a .45 automatic, and used a small flashlight.

January 19, 1948: (5) First degree robbery of Lea. (6) First degree robbery of Regina. (7) Kidnaping Regina for robbery, with infliction of bodily harm; punishment fixed at death. (8) Violation of Penal Code, section 288a committed against Regina. Mr. Lea and Regina were parked in an isolated place. Defendant approached in a car, from which he flashed a red spotlight, and threatened the victims with a .45 automatic.

January 20, 1948: (9) First degree robbery of Stone, who was parked in an isolated place with a girl. Stone testified that he 'would suspect' that defendant was the robber. The robber approached in a car from which he flashed a red spotlight, displayed a .45 automatic, and used a small flashlight.

January 22, 1948: (10) Attempted robbery of Hurlburt. (11) Kidnaping Mary for robbery, with infliction of bodily harm; punishment fixed at death. (12) Attempted rape of Mary. (13) Violation of Penal Code, section 288a committed against Mary. In these crimes, too, the victims were parked at an isolated place. Defendant flashed a red spotlight mounted on the car which he drove, produced a .45 automatic, and used a flashlight. Mary testified that after he had forced her into his car, driven her some distance to another isolated place, and sexually assaulted her, defendant went to the spotlight of the car and she heard a click, a rustling, and the sound of defendant placing something metallic in the back seat and in the glove compartment of his car.

January 23, 1948: (14) First degree robbery of Waisler. (15) First degree robbery of Lescher. (16) Kidnaping Waisler for robbery, with infliction of bodily harm; punishment fixed at life imprisonment without possibility of parole. (17) Kidnaping Lescher for robbery. Defendant and David Knowles, one armed with a .45 automatic and one with a toy gun, 'held up' the clothing store in which Waisler, the proprietor, and Lescher, a clerk, were working, and committed the crimes described in People v. Knowles (1950), 35 Cal.2d 175, 217 P.2d 1.

About two hours after the commission of the last mentioned group of crimes defendant, driving the stolen car with Knowles as a passenger, saw two police officers in a distinctively marked traffic car apparently observing defendant's car. (The officers had received a radio call to look out for a car of the description of the one driven by defendant.) Even before the officers turned on their red light and sounded their siren, defendant fled. After a wild chase the car driven by defendant went out of control, the officers rammed it, defendant attempted to flee on foot, and he and Knowles were captured. As defendant left the car a .45 automatic fell to the pavement. In defendant's pocket, among other things, was change wrapped in a manner similar to change which had been stolen from Waisler's store. In the stolen car were clothing and a wallet which had been stolen from Waisler and Lescher.

The jury found that defendant was armed with a deadly weapon at the time of the commission of each of the above crimes except that numbered (2), and at the time of his arrest. (Pen.Code, § 969c provides for allegations and findings as to these matters.) The jury further found that defendant had suffered previous convictions of two robberies and of assault with a deadly weapon. Pen.Code, §§ 969, 969a, require that the prosecution charge prior felony convictions. Defendant was also charged with and acquitted of one count of burglary.

Upon the record there is no substantial question of sufficiency of proof. The evidence of the commission of the offenses was not contradicted. When defendant was apprehended he was driving the automobile which was the subject of crime (2); he was identified by the victims as the perpetrator of the other crimes of which he was convicted; and he was connected with such crimes by real evidence in his possession at the time of his capture. Defendant testified that he did not commit the charged crimes and introduced testimony of alibi witnesses as to some of them.

At no time since the original reporter's transcript of the trial was prepared has defendant made it appear that the transcript does not adequately and substantially reflect the nature of the People's case and of his defense. But since rendition of the judgments of conviction on June 25, 1948, he has sought to avoid their execution, and to secure a new trial, on the theory (among others) that under California's statutory provision for automatic appeal from judgments of death (Pen.Code, § 1239, subd. (b)), its constitutional provisions for supreme court review of the record of proceedings leading to such judgments (Cal.Const. art. VI, §§ 4, 4 1/2), and its Rules on Appeal providing for preparation of such record, he was denied due process and equal protection because, after the trial but before the transcript had been completed, the official court reporter died and transcription of the notes of the oral proceedings was completed by another official reporter. In state and federal courts he has iterated and reiterated charges (in substance or effect) that the transcript does not present a reasonably accurate and complete record of the evidence and other oral proceedings but is a fabrication of falsities constructed through the fraudulent and conspiratorial collaboration of the trial judge, the prosecuting attorney, and the substitute reporter, concocted in an ex parte proceeding wherein the state did not permit defendant to participate either in person or by counsel. His charges that the record is inadequate, prejudicially inaccurate, and fraudulent have been found to be false by every court which has passed on the facts. Pursuant to remand of the United States Supreme Court in Chessman v. Teets (1957), 354 U.S. 156, 77 S.Ct. 1127, 1 L.Ed.2d 1253, and implementing orders and proceedings obedient to the remand, all as hereinafter more particularly recounted, the matter is now before us both on the original appeal from the judgments of conviction to be resolved on the resettled transcript, and for review of the resettlement of transcript proceedings.

History of the Disputed Reporter's Transcript of the Trial. The verdicts were returned on May 21, 1948. Mr. Ernest R. Perry, the official court reporter who had reported the trial, died unexpectedly of acute coronary thrombosis on June 23, 1948, before transcription of his shorthand notes had been completed. On June 25, 1948, the trial judge, the...