Chivalry in San Quentin

Some of them had seen "the Duchess" when she entered San Quentin, a fox-faced, shabby murderess, bound for death in a gas chamber. Through the cell blocks the grapevine carried her story: that she (Juanita Spinelli), her common-law husband, Mike Simeone, and Thug Gordon Hawkins had drugged and drowned a gangster. Later another bulletin: a 30-day reprieve for the three by Governor Culbert Olson. Later still: "She's going to sniff it [lethal gas] just the same."

A few days later, Warden Clinton Duffy was told that a committee of convicts requested an interview. The committee filed into his office, stated their request: that one of them should die in the Duchess' place. They handed the warden a solemn petition:

"After establishing a worthy and universally commendable record, a 100-year record, of never executing a woman, the State should not break that record. If that is done the world at large would declare, in sad disillusionment, that deterioration and retrogression had entered the world's most golden State."

Three hundred more convicts, the committee announced, were ready to add their names to the eleven signatures on the petition.

Last week Governor Olson gave the Duchess and her two pals a further 30-day reprieve.

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