Caryl Whittier Chessman (May 27, 1921 – May 2, 1960) was a convicted robber, kidnapper and rapist who was sentenced to death for a series of crimes committed in January 1948 in the Greater Los Angeles Area. The last non-military prisoner to be executed in the United States for a crime other than murder, Chessman was convicted under a loosely-interpreted "Little Lindbergh law"—later repealed, but not retroactively—that defined kidnapping as a capital offense under certain circumstances.