"Appeals": Chapter XXII of The Barbara Graham Story

Appeals

Two weeks after the verdicts, Judge Fricke formally sentenced the three convicted murderers to "suffer the extreme penalty, to wit, the death penalty, and that said penalty be inflicted within the walls of the state penitentiary at San Quentin, California, in the manner prescribed by law, to wit, the administration of lethal gas, until said defendant is dead."

Perkins and Santo, heavily manacled together, were taken aboard a special train car by nine guards for their overnight journey to Death Row. Barbara had a much shorter journey, about 30 miles to the women's prison in Corona, where a special solitary confinement cell had been prepared for her.

The appeals process, automatic in California death sentences, took the case to the state supreme court, where the verdict and sentences were confirmed; then, new attorneys appointed by the court to handle federal appeals, took the matter all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court, where relief was also denied. Justice moved much swifter in the 1950s than it does in the 1990s; it was unusual for a death row inmate to wait more than four or five years for the sentence to be carried out: "Red Light Bandit" Caryl Chessman set a major record when he managed to last more than ten years before he was gassed at San Quentin.

But for Perkins, Santo, and Barbara, things moved right along, mainly because there was very little upon which to base an appeal. By the time 18 months had passed, there were no courts left from which to ask a review of the case, and the trio was scheduled to die on June 3, 1955.

As so many condemned convicts do, Barbara turned to religion for comfort, and gradually resigned herself to the fact that she was going to be executed. Henry Graham finally returned to California to claim his and Barbara's little boy, Tommy, and to kick his drug habit and make an attempt to straighten out his life. Tommy was allowed to visit with his mother from time to time when Henry brought him there, and Barbara was able to watch him grow from a 15-month-old toddler into an active little three-year-old. A handsome, wide-eyed child, the last time Barbara saw him was just after his third birthday, when she gave him a little stuffed horse made by one of the lifers at the women's prison.

Barbara gave few interviews while awaiting death. Everyone who did interview her seemed to want her to confess and clear her conscience. Finally she put the matter to rest by saying, "If I were guilty, I would never admit it and let my children be branded with that stigma all their lives."

As it got closer and closer to June 3rd, a pragmatic Barbara merely shrugged and said, "If it is God's will that I die, then I'll die like a lady."

Unfortunately, she would not be allowed even that.