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

Prentice-Hall, 1954, 1954. 1st Edition 2nd Printing. Hardcover. Very Good/No Jacket. Octavo, hardcover, VG in black boards, white lettering on spine. No jacket. 361 pp. 3rd printing. :Here is the story of a man condemned to death in 1948 ,convicted of robbery, automobile theft, and kidnapping with associated bodily harm. He received the death penalty under the "Little Lindbergh Law" of California in connection with the kidnapping and murder of Mary Alice Meza. He is, or has been by his own admission, a psychopathic hoodlum, a criminal with no pretensions to education or refinement. Yet he still lives while these words are being written (although he may be dead before the book appears) as the result of an almost superhuman effort to master the intricacies of law and stay his own execution indefinitely. For eight years he has defended himself brilliantly -- but he has mastered more than legal profundities. He has found time to read widely, and he has proved himself and natural writer with a hypnotically gripping style; in his own life he has the perfect subject for the exercise of his genius.