CHESSMAN CASE

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29067, 2 December 1959, Page 27

CHESSMAN CASE

Group Appeals For New Trial (N.Z. Press Association—Copj/npM) WASHINGTON, November 30. Aldous Huxley and the psychiatrist Karl Menninger today joined 21 other prominent people in urging the United States Supreme Court to order a new trial for Caryl Chessman, the condemned California “red light bandit.” In a brief offered as “friends of the court” the 23 people said that if the State of. California failed to obey such an order,. Chessman should be freed. Convicted 11 years ago of charges including attempted rape and kidnapping, Chessman has fought for his life in a variety of legal moves in Federal and State Courts. The Supreme Court expected to make known next month whether it will grant a hearing on Chessman’s latest appeal, filed on November 2. The group asserted that Chessman’s conviction, in a State Court in Los Angeles, was "hot the product of a fair trial before a fair tribunal.”

The 53-page brief reviewed the long history of the case and the various legal contentions made by Chessman and his counsel. Others in the group were the television entertainer Steve Allen and Dr. William Graves, former staff physician at San Quentin Prison, where Chessman has been held in “death row” for llj years.