CHESSMAN TRIAL INVESTIGATION
Judge Questioned (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LOS ANGELES, January 7. The convicted criminal Caryl Chessman yesterday cross-exam-ined the Judge who sentenced him to death nine years ago. Acting as his own attorney, the 35-year-old convict-author asked Superior Judge Charles W. Fricke: “Do you consider that I had a fair trial?” “You got a fair trial,” the 75-year-old Judge answered. Chessman was convicted in 1948 of 17 felonies, most of them involving kidnapping or rape. He was sentenced to death, but he has evaded six separate dates for his execution in the gas chamber. The current hearing was ordered by the United States Supreme Court to settle the question raised by Chessman on the validity of the transcript of his 1948 trial. The transcript, on which Chessman’s several appeals were based, was completed by another court reporter after the death of the man who originally took the shorthand notes.
In his questioning of Judge Fricke yesterday, Chessman brought out the fact that the reporter who completed the transcript, Stanley Fraser, is related by marriage to deputy District Attorney J. Miller Leavy, who prosecuted in the Chessman case,
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Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28480, 9 January 1958, Page 7
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188CHESSMAN TRIAL INVESTIGATION Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28480, 9 January 1958, Page 7
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