"Death Row Chaplain" Byron E. Eshelman Signed TLS Dated 1969 For Sale

“I have come to believe that the death penalty is fundamentally a symptom ofbewilderment and confusion in society,” wrote Eshelman, the San QuentinProtestant chaplain from 1951-71. He had formerly been chaplain at Alcatrazfederal prison. “A culture that resorts to the death penalty as a method ofcoping with its troubled is evidencing the same desperation, panic and outrageas the emotionally twisted individual who, in his instability, kills a fellowhuman being,” he added. “In the 12 years that Lewis E. Lawes was warden at SingSing, from 1920 through 1931, he escorted 150 men and one woman to the deathchamber,” Eshelman wrote. “His conclusions were essentially the same as I havereached during more than a decade at San Quentin. “He (Lawes) put it this way:‘Not only does capital punishment fail in its justification, but no punishmentcould be invented with so many inherent defects. It is unequal punishment inthe way it is applied to the rich and to the poor.’” One of Eshelman’s keypoints is that executions wipe out the chance for “rehabilitation” of thecondemned prisoner. He cites a number of condemned men he came to know who, hefelt, had been rehabilitated while waiting to die. He also maintained someexecuted men were clearly insane, but not within the legal definition ofinsanity. One case was Leanderess Riley. When Riley’s time to die arrived onFeb. 20, 1953, Eshelman writes, “A guard unlocked his cell. He began a long,shrieking cry. It was a bone chilling wordless cry… The guards needed all theirstrength to hold him while the doctor taped the end of the stethoscope inplace… Leanderess had to be carried to the gas chamber, fighting, writhing allthe way.”
After he was strapped into the death chair in the gas chamber, Leanderessmanaged to free his hands, and had to be strapped in again, tighter this time.Again struggling to free himself, the gas finally did its job and Leanderessbreathed his last. Reporting his view of the death penalty, Eshelman wrote: “Wedo not execute truly mature, responsible people who have developed genuinecapacities for making decisions and exercising self-control. We execute fixatedjuveniles who in many areas of their personalities cannot be held responsiblefor their actions… Only when we develop the sensitivity to appreciate thecompulsive nature of immaturity will we have sufficient insight to abandon theprimitive rite of capital punishment.”
After he retired from San Quentin, Eshelman became a marriage counselor andpublic speaker. He died in 1989. Eshelman’s son, Carlton, and daughter, Bonnie,who lived many years at Alcatraz and San Quentin with their dad, still live inNorthern California. He is a carpenter who worked on the new San Quentin medicalbuilding.