6 20 256 https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/15a5beae899672357eff84bfdc1d42ec.jpg edf6ce0d1de07f28e0294175118e53aa https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/d8261acf4e62e5b93617cfeb14debcb2.jpg 4cad348a95feb90dd8362bc18649b785 https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/4682a327b7ab2df4a1f2c7c437ee91f8.jpg 6ea48cf956d30f7f1466789be12c5fd4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 1, 1976-1979 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [Title] Rally Condemns Suspensions [Author] By Helen Marie McFalls "Innocent until proven guilty" and "due process of law" were the cries of a crowd of MWC students gathered on Westmoreland Green on Friday, March 30 to protest the suspensions of four Madison residents who were arrested in the Madison drug raid. President Prince B. Woodard suspended the four men the day after their arrests and scheduled administrative hearings for each on April 3. The purpose for the rally was to point out and protest the fact that these four students were barred from classes before any legal proof of their guilt was established; before the police lab reports determined whether the confiscated substances are illegal. According to Michael Mello, the first speaker at the rally and former president of the MWC chapter of NORML, "There are two problems with (the suspensions): these problems compose the essence of (this) protest. First, by suspending the students before the (civil court) hearing, Woodard is saying that they are guilty until proven innocent. They are being punished before a hearing has determined that they are even guilty of the offense . . . Second, there seems to be a problem with the College trying and punishing the students for the same offense that they will later be tried for in civil court. This smacks of double jeopardy . . ." After Mello outlined the reasons for the demonstration, Frederick Ford, a practicing attorney in Alexandria and a volunteer for the Virginia State chapter of NORML addressed the audience. Ford began by commending the gathered students for their efforts and stating "I hope the President (Woodard) is listening today." He then launched into an analysis of the issue being protested and the implications of the issue. He said, "It is a sad thing that this College's administration, by its actions, is trying to teach a very dangerous lesson. First they teach you in political science classes that people are innocent until proven guilty." He noted that we are taught that there are safeguards within the law to ensure that a person is treated as innocent until proven guilty and that no action can be taken until guilt is proved. "And now," he observed, "the administration is saying we don't care that a person is innocent until proven guilty. The administration only cares about raw, naked power and they have it and you (MWC students) are their slaves." Ford commented that the student protesters have "learned far better than the administration what our laws mean. You should be congratulated, they condemned." "I submit to the President of this college," Ford continued, "that this (possession of marijuana) [end page one] [start page two] is not a serious crime; not a serious problem. I cannot understand why the administration is taking such action for such a piddling offense." Finally Ford pledged the support of the state NORML saying, "With you, the state NORML chapter demands that these four students have the same rights that the members of the administration and every person have and deserve." Vice President of Custis dorm George Semples delivered the next address. "Who are we?" he began. "We are not a group of angry pot smokers, we are a group of concerned students." He noted that as students we can identify with the four Madison males who are losing "two precious and critical weeks of their education" for an offense that has yet to be proved. Semples said that he has seen the search warrant procured for the Madison drug raid. It was composed of three parts: first, the suspicion of paraphenalia. This, Semples noted, "is not illegal, and if there was substance inside that peraphenalia it is not yet proved. But these students are presently out of school." Second, the warrant stated suspicion of marijuana. The speaker said, "It might be obvious to us, it might be obvious to them but there is yet no proof (that the substance was indeed marijuana) and these students are still out of school." Third, the warrant contained a clause providing for the suspicion of distribution materials. A scale was confiscated during the raid. Semples noted simply, "It is not illegal to possess equipment to weigh things and yet these students are still out of school!" The last speaker of the day was MWC student John Schumacher. He noted that MWC is not and should not be a democracy. It is an oligopoly comprised of Woodard and the B.O.V. "But," he questioned, "is this oligopoly a just one?" Schumacher believes that the suspensions of the four Madison residents is an indication of the justice or lack thereof in MWC's administrative element. "It is obvious," he commented, "that the administration and the B.O.V. are more concerned with the reputation of the school than the justice of their policies." More than 100 people attended the rally. Press coverage included The Free Lance-Star, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, AVC-TV, WMWC and the Bullet. It should be noted that the rally was the result of a meeting of concerned students in Westmoreland on March 29. The four suspended Madison males were in no way involved in the protest and were not present at the rally. As Schumacher noted in the closing speech, "the concerns of this rally do not pertain to any individual case. It is a principle for which we fight." [end page two] [start page three] [Image - Frederick Ford stands at microphone, with a sign labeled "Westmoreland Hall" in front of him] [Image credit] Photograph by Houston Kempton [Image caption] Frederick Ford, an Alexandria attorney who serves as a NORML volunteer, speaks at the protest on Westmoreland Green as ex-MWC NORML president Mike Mello and Eric Wootten look on. [end page three] Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Bales, Jack Vol. No./Issue No. Volume and issue number for the newspaper (if available) vol. 52, issue 18 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rally Condemns Suspensions Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McFalls, Helen Marie Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived McFalls, Helen Marie. "Rally Condemns Suspensions." The Bullet (Mary Washington College, Fredericksburg, VA), April 3, 1979, p. 1. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 3 JPGs 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Fredericksburg, VA Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1979-04-03 Description An account of the resource On March 30, 1979, MWC students hold a rally to protest the college suspensions of four male Mary Washington students charged with drug offenses. Subject The topic of the resource Marijuana--Law and legislation National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws Frederick Ford George Semples Houston Kempton John Schumacher Marijuana Mary Washington College Michael Mello NORML Prince B. Woodward The Bullet https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/bfdb33f31ed83161eb3ebfbf5828de0e.jpg a8f0043d951e2474b95a8a6ebaafdbc9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 2, 1983-1994 Text Text Any textual data included in the document It’s not often that a U.S. congressman chooses a lawyer who has made a career of keeping mobsters out of jail. But that’s what Rep. Mario Biaggi of New York did when he recently hired Barry Ivan Slotnick to defend him on charges that he peddled influence for favors. No one could blame Biaggi. In March Slotnick and his former law partner Bruce Cutler stunned prosecutors by persuading a jury that alleged Mafia kingpin John gotti and six codefendants were innocent of federal racketeering charges. In 26 years of defending mob biggies, drug dealers, youth gangs and assorted unsavories, Slotnick has won jury acquittals for an astounding 95 percent of his clients. This week he faces yet another challenge when he tries to convince a jury that “subway vigilante” Bernhard Goetz is just a decent, law-abiding citizen. In New York’s most celebrated criminal case since David (Son of Sam) Berkowitz was put away for mass murder, Slotnick will argue that Goetz acted in self-defense when he shot four black men he thought were about to mug him on a subway two years ago. Slotnick’s first major break came in 1968 when he successfully blocked federal efforts to prosecute Mafia don Joseph Colombo. Since then, federal prosecutors have gained a grudging respect for the bearded Bronx native. They concede he has kept enough distance from his clients to remain credible to a jury, even while gaining the reputation as one of organized crime’s favorite outside counsels. Slotnick cringes at the tag. He prefers to describe his practice in constitutional terms. “Keeping government in check,” he says, “is the most important thing I do.” Outstretched arms: Nevertheless, over the years he has a had a very close personal relationships with the Colombo family. Slotnick was on the Brooklyn don’s upstate New York farm when his son took his first steps toward Colombo’s outstretched arms. In 1971 he was only inches away when Colombo was gunned down at an Italian-American rally. Recently he represented the patriarch’s son—Anthony Colombo—who eventually pleaded guilty to racketeering charges. Slotnick’s remarkable acquittal rate isn’t due to excessive plea bargaining; he takes the majority of his cases to trial. And he does do more than defend alleged mobsters. His clients have included Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the the militant Jewish Defense League; the head of a Chinese youth gang charged with murder; a corporate president accused of smuggling cocaine, and a Queens Sunday-scchool teacher who gained brief fame as the first woman to win one of the many paternity suits filed against Las Vegas crooner Engelbert Humperdinck. Slotnick once even saved a German shepherd from being destroyed when a woman who claimed she had been bitten was unable to pick the dog out in a lineup. Slotnick’s supporters say his success stems from an innovative courtroom style—The American Lawyer magazine said he pursued “ingenious strategies in impossible situations” when it selected him criminal-defense lawyer of the year in 1981. That year he defended to Hasidic Jews charged with the attempted murder of a black teenager by filling the courtroom with Hasidim in traditional black garb and placing the two defendants among them. When no witness could pick out the defendants, a jury that included seven blacks but no Jews acquitted his clients. In another case, Slotnick defended a man charged with bribery by arguing that he was guilty of grand larceny instead. When prosecutors sought to retry his client, Slotnick successfully cited the constitutional protection against double jeopardy that prevents defendants from being tried twice for a similar offense. Hung jury? In preparing for the Goetz trial, Slotnick has once again stepped out on a legal limb. Recently he drew a judge’s ire when he obliquely reminded 18 prospective jurors that it was in their power to ignore jury instructions. “If you find that the prosecution has proved the case beyond a doubt, and if the judge instructs you that you must convict on that basis, would you feel obligated to do so?” he asked. With that, Slotnick raised the so-called “nullification issue” in which a jury, acting as the “conscience of the community,” can vote for acquittal despite the evidence. The judge warned the jurors that such a strategy would cause “utter chaos” by “overthrowing the rule of la” and increasing the chances of a hung jury. With few facts in dispute in the case, Slotnick may have no other choice. He will defend Goetz, in part, by appealing to the jury’s innate sense that a climate of fear exists in New York City—an atmosphere that could justify Goetz’s action in the minds of ordinary citizens. He hopes to convince the jury that Goetz was just a “decent citizen fighting back, desperately seeking self-protection and retribution against a violent crime.” Despite his growing notoriety, Slotnick has yet to achieve what he wants most—acceptance in New York’s clubby legal fraternity that looks askance at attorneys who defend mobsters. “Barry wants nothing more than to be seen as an Edward Bennett Williams type,” says a top federal law-enforcement official. “Yet as hard as he tries with a Bernie Goetz or a Marrio Biaggi, the bottom line is that the bulk of his practice is Mafia.” A few legal experts are beginning to show respect for the complexities of defending members of organized crime. Still, Slotnick will have a tough time winning over what may be his toughest jury yet—his peers in the legal community.<br /><br />[image - Person dressed in suit sitting in chair.]<br /><br />[image caption - A don, a dog and a Sunday-school teacher: Hoping for respect] Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Magazine Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Chase, Suzanne Student Editor of the Digital Item Dickinson, Terra Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Slotnick for the Defense Subject The topic of the resource Slotnick, Barry, 1939- Goetz, Bernhard Hugo, 1947- Criminal defense attorneys Description An account of the resource An article about Bary Slotnick, defender of the subway vigilante. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McKillop, Peter Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Newsweek Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1987-05-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 JPG 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant New York, NY Barry Slotnick Bernie Goetz New York City https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/bc66b7c29c7fb109d08aae80d0a1fedb.jpg 2f1eddca65bc48a67135ec5a083f1f7f https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/6a3aa9a7ccc63ec6a8c7d582ad15040a.jpg 7958f917ea03938a99a614845b98cb49 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 2, 1983-1994 Text Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. McDonough, Caitlin Text Any textual data included in the document TALLAHASSEE – To their dismay, prosecutors are learning that Florida’s death sentence law suffers from a kind of genetic defect – a flaw that could give dozens of killers a second chance at life sentences. Last month, the state Supreme Court ruled that a crucial jury instruction about premeditation and cruelty in Florida capital cases is unconstitutional. That decision sprang from a similar ruling by the U.S Supreme Court. Combined, the two cases probably represent the most significant death penalty setbacks for prosecutors since the mid-1980s, experts say. In both decisions, the courts ruled that standard jury instructions used in virtually every Florida death penalty case gave jurors too much discretion to demand death. The result: The sentences of most of Florida’s 339 Death Row inmates probably will have to be reviewed in appeals courts over the next few years. For the majority of condemned inmates, the error probably will not prevent their eventual execution. But at least a few prisoners will escape the electric chair as a result of the rulings. In fact, one – Davidson James, convicted of the 1981 robbery-murder of an elderly Hillsborough County woman – already has. He got a life sentence when his case went back. And there’s a chance that the problem eventually will require new sentencing before new juries in dozens of cases. That would mean even more inmates would avoid electrocution. “This is a major constitutional change in the law,” said Steven Goldstein, an associate dean at the Florida State University law school. Mark Schlakman, a legal adviser to Gov. Lawton Chiles, says that the state’s death penalty jury instructions ought to be thoroughly reviewed in the wake of the decisions. The instructions are written by committees of lawyers and approved by the state Supreme Court. Said Jacksonville State Attorney Harry Shorstein: “Of course, it’s difficult enough to try death penalty cases without changing the rules after the fact.” Prosecutors have been burned before by a similar ruling. In a 1987 case called Hitchcock vs. Dugger, the U.S. Supreme Court threw the state for a loop when it held another Florida jury instruction relating to evidence in the defendant’s favor was unconstitutional. Eventually, about … Death Row inmates got new sentencing hearings. Damage Control This time around, with so many more sentences at risk, Florida officials are hoping to avoid that kind of chaos. And state Supreme Court justices already have made it clear that they’ll strictly enforce procedural rules that could halt most of the appeals. In fact, some Death Row defense lawyers complain that the justices are overdoing the damage control – possibly to avoid embarrassment. “Unless the court found some way to limit the scope of [the recent cases], the disruption on Florida’s Death Row could be significant and the Florida Supreme Court could wind up being the one blamed by the public,” said Michael Mello, a Vermont Law School professor who’s perhaps the leading expert on Florida’s death penalty jury instructions. Jury instructions are the way that the law gets applied to individual cases. If those instructions are flawed, jurors are liable to apply the law incorrectly. That’s exactly what happened in the two recent cases, the courts [are saying]. April 21 in the case of Andrea Hicks Jackson, who had been sentenced to death for the slaying of a Jacksonville police officer. In her appeal, Jackson’s lawyers alleged that a key jury instruction used at her trial was unconstitutionally vague. The instruction told jurors how to define of of the key aggravating factors used to justify death, the “cold, calculated and premeditated” factor. Jurors apparently found that the factor applied, because they recommended the death penalty for Jackson by 7-5. But on appeal, Jackson’s lawyers argued that the jury instruction was unconstitutionally broad. The state Supreme Court concluded that Jackson’s lawyers were right. By a 5-2 cote, the court invalidated the jury instruction and ordered a new sentencing for Jackson before a new jury. Two justices Ben Overt[…] and Parker Lee McDonald, […]ented, saying th[…] though […] instruction was […]. […], the majority […] the penalty phase of […]] case in which the […] jury instruction [on that aggravating factor] was given subject to attack,” The decision was prompted by an earlier U.S supreme Court ruling invalidating another Florida jury instruction. That decision, issued in 1992, threw out the instruction on the so-called “heinous atrocious or cruel” aggravating factor. Again, the problem was vagueness. The potential damage is so large because most Florida death cases involve one or both of the aggravating factors under attack. Florida prosecutors can expect to limit the damage significantly, however. First prosecutors can argue that defendants who didn’t object to the instruction at their trials aren’t eligible for relief. Second, they can argue that the incorrect jury instruction didn’t make any difference in the outcome – for example, where the killer’s sentence was supported by two or three other aggravating factors. So far, those methods have stymied all but four of the 25 or so Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Notes Additional information regarding your item. This content will not be viewable in the Public View. ink splotch in the middle of the article. Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Florida Court ruling could spare lives of some condemned inmates Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McKinninon, John D. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1994-05-07 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Language A language of the resource English Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 jpgs 300 dpi Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Florida Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived McKinninon, John D., "Florida court ruling could spare lives of some condemned inmates," Miami Herald, May 7, 1994. 1A, 16A. Subject The topic of the resource Florida Supreme Court Death Penalty Death Row Description An account of the resource The Flordia Court made a ruling to spare the lives of condemned inmates. death penalty Death Row inmates Michael A. Mello Michael Allen Mello Michael Mello Supreme Court Supreme Court of Florida https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/ec860cc8d367d2d39601af5117f97989.jpg 2ec3987385b27c49403992f236348ebc https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/ec3685ae537c9d95e39a2773d0ce91c6.jpg a387af6dcf48eca164815bb2a4f1a24c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 3, 1995 Text Text Any textual data included in the document To the lawyers defending him, Raleigh Porter sometimes seems like a ghost already, Porter, who's scheduled to be executed Wednesday, would not face the electric chair if his appeals were being considered today, they say. But Porter doesn't live in the present - not the legal present, anyway. Instead, he inhabits another legal world, one that has been dead and buried for a decade. Soon enough, unless the courts intervene, Porter will finally be put to rest, just like the old rules and standards that determined his fate. Even then, though, Raleigh Porter's case - and the problems it symbolizes - are likely to keep haunting the courts. Convicted in 1978 of strangling two Port Charlotte retirees, Porter seemed to be a good candidate to be spared the electric chair: At his sentencing [[end page]] [[start page]] hearing, he won a recommendation of life in prison from the jury. BY most accounts, it was one of Porter's lawyers who pulled it off. In his closing argument, attorney Robert Jacobs read a description of an electric-chair execution: "The executioner threw the switch. My father smashed into his straps as if hit by a train. He snapped back and forth, cracking like a whip. The leather straps groaned and creaked. Smoke rose from my father's head. . . . When the current was turned off my father's rigid body suddenly slumped in the chair, and it perhaps occurred to the witnesses that what they had taken for the shuddering spasmic movements of his life for God know how many seconds was instead a portrait of electric current, normally invisible, moving through a field of resistance." [[end page]] [[start page]] As it turned out, this was fiction - and not entirely accurate fiction - from a novel, E.L. Doctorow's The book of Daniel. But it may have worked. Something did. The jury voted unanimously for life. The judge in the case, Richard M. Stanley of Naples, wasn't so sympathetic. And unbeknown to Porter's lawyers, he'd already decided that Porter should die. "The court is aware that a death by electrocution is not a pretty sight, but then neither were the pictures of the bodies of the old married couple," Stanley intoned a few days later. "The totality of the circumstances dictate the death penalty be imposed." In looking back on the sentence, Stanley says: "I thought about that old man and old woman, married over 50 years...and then one had to watch the other being strangled." Evolving policies Even before the judge pronounced Porter's fate, the state Supreme Court had decided that jury recommendations would be followed when there was any plausible reason for doing so. But when it comes to the modern death penalty, it's often hard to know just what the law is, or what it means. For two to three years in the mid-1980s, for example, the state Supreme Court seemed to change its mind concerning cases where the judge overrides the jury. It let stand a number of death sentences where the jury had recommended life. No one knows why. So when Porter appealed his case in 1985, the Supreme Court upheld Judge Stanley's death sentence, even though attorneys could offer several reasons for the jury's life recommendation, including his age and demeanor on the stand. "Porter [was] just singularly unlucky in the time frame when [[end page]] [[start page]] [[Death penalty backer: Judge Richard M. Stanley - image]] his appeal came up," says Michael Mello, a Vermont Law School professor and an expert on Florida's death sentence. "It really was during the only window during its history when the justices seemed to have lost their interest in closely monitoring jury overrides. . . . And hence Raleigh Porter's death warrant." 1972 high court ruling For the death penalty - especially the death penalty - it wasn't supposed to be so confused, so convoluted. But sometimes it seems the harder judges and lawyers try to get the death penalty right, the more they get it wrong. The problems date from the early 1970s. Concerned that the death penalty had been applied disproportionately against minorities, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 struck down death penalty laws across America, demanding that states find a system that would be more rational, more standardized, more uniform. To lawyers and legislators, that could only mean one thing - reining in the traditional discretion of juries. Juries had been responsible for doling out death for years, with only their consciences as their guide. Now, the process would be guided by judges armed with complex new legal formulas. In the vanguard, Florida would be the first state to try to meet the new standards. Like a lot of first tries, it was far from perfect. In particular, Florida officials couldn't quite decide whether the U.S. Supreme Court just wanted more rules for jurors to follow, or whether the high court wanted jurors cut out altogether [[end page]] [[start page]] So lawmakers reached an awkward, yet well-intended compromise: Jurors would stay in, but they would get less authority. They would make a recommendation. But the final decision would be made by the trial judge. The legal architects thought this had a big advantage: Florida believed that death sentences would become more rational [[end page]] [[start page]] because judges - unlike juries - could apply specific standards to each case in written orders, and appeals courts could follow their thinking and review sentences in detail. It didn't work out that way. Intricacies upon intricacies The new system with its formulas turned out to be incredibly complex, requiring juries and judges to consider many factors - violent criminal record and motive, for example. Because of the complexities, appeals judges found themselves tinkering at one point. Finally they decreed that Florid'as whole system was too complex. They declared that henceforth jury sentencing recommendations in death cases would be upheld unless "virtually not reasonable person" could agree with it. What's more, every time the appeals courts made a change in the law, they created a new appeal issue for every Death Row inmate who had already gone through. In a legal setting that demanded NASA-quality tolerances, executions become more difficult to accomplish that a space shuttle launch - and almost as expensive. Even so, there are still bugs in the system. Perhaps because judges have become so painfully aware of the delays they've fostered, they sometimes haven't been as careful about retrofitting the changes they keep making - as Raleigh Porter is finding out. Some state Supreme Court justices have even said that they would not decided cases like Porter's the same way today as they did in the mid-1980s. The Florida courts "have been pretty reluctant to revisit a lot of cases," says Mello, the Vermont Law School professor. In many cases, "they've bent over backward to come up with whatever artifice they could" to avoid overturning old death sentences, he says. [[end page]] [[start page]] 'Law of the case' Among the reasons courts have used have been a doctrine called "the law of the case," which means that issues decided in the first appeal - such as the jury override in the Porter case - usually can't be revisited in later appeals. Why the difference in treatment of some cases versus others? "I've really tried to ponder what explains the difference, and I haven't come up with any explanation other than randomness," Mello says. "It's just a crap shoot." Meanwhile, judges have tinkered with Raleigh Porter's case for 17 years. Today, the Florida Supreme Court will hear the last appeals scheduled in the case. But Judge Stanley, the man who sent Porter to Death Row 17 years ago, has no doubts about the death penalty. He remembers [[end page]] [[start page]] a debate with foes of capital punishment: "They said to me, 'Judge, suppose that they passed a law that said the man who passes the death sentence has to flip they switch on the electric chair?' I said to them. 'Well, I will go along with that as long as they allow me, right after I pronounce the sentence, to reach down by my left leg and come up with my pistol and shoot 'em right between the eyes." John D. Mckinnon, who holds a law degree from the University of North Carolina, covers legal affairs in The Herald's Tallahassee bureau. Tomorrow: Redemption on Death Row. [[On Trial: Raleigh Porter was convicted in Moore Haven, Fla. - image]] [['81 police mugshot: Porter - image]] Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Vol. No./Issue No. Volume and issue number for the newspaper (if available) The Herald from Tuesday, March 28, 1995. 7A Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Blake, Amy Student Editor of the Digital Item Dickinson, Terra Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shifts in law come too late to aid killer of Florida couple Subject The topic of the resource Death Penalty Description An account of the resource The issue of Raleigh Porter's death sentence by electric chair could have been avoided due to newer laws in Florida courts. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McKinnon, John D. Pancake, John Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Herald Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-03-28 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 JPGs 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Florida electric chair Florida death penalty juries Life sentence Michael Mello Raleigh Porter U.S. Supreme Court https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/86bc344cabc05589b38027186ae86b66.jpg c116f6a7090dba168f2f3670557fcbc9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 3, 1995 Text Text Any textual data included in the document A defense lawyer plans to challenge the secret state investigation that led Gov. Lawton Chiles to sign a new death warrant last week for “Crazy Joe” Spaziano. The basic problem with the secret report, said law professor Michael Mello, representing the condemned man: It’s the only part of the state’s case against Spaziano that’s still intact. At the very least, Spaziano should be allowed to read it and challenge it before it’s used as a justification to kill him, Mello said Monday. Replied Deputy Attorney Gen-eral Pete Antonacci: “We’re defending the governor. We think the governor acted prop-erly, and we think the warrant is viable and should be carried out.” The latest twists in the long case began two months ago, when the key trial witness against Spa-ziano recanted his testimony. At the trial, a teenaged Anthony Dilisio testified that Spaziano took him to a rural trash dump to show off the remains of murdered hospital clerk Laura Harberts. But Dilisio apparently didn’t recall details of the gruesome scene until he had been questioned extensively by police and hypnotized twice. Now, he says the memory was fabricated and his testimony was coached by investigators. In the wake of the revelations, Chiles postponed Spaziano’s exe-cution and ordered the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to examine the case. Last week, Chiles signed another death war-rant for September after FDLE agents reported that several peo-ple--who were promised confi-dentiality by the state--recalled hearing statement that impli-cated Spaziano around the time of the murder. Mello said he’ll add the chal-lenge to his pending appeal before the state Supreme Court. But Mello says he’s not planning to pursue further appeals in the fed-eral district court if the current petition is rejected. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Payne, Shannon Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Crazy Joe' defense to dispute secret probe Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McKinnon, John D. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-08-29 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 JPG 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Woodland Park, NJ Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment Description An account of the resource On Tuesday August 29, 1995, "Crazy Joe" Spaziano's defense lawyer Michael Mello challenges death warrant. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived McKinnon, John D. "'Crazy Joe' defense to dispute secret probe." The Herald (Woodland Park, New Jersey), August 29, 1995. "Crazy Joe" Spaziano capital punishment death penalty defense lawyer Michael A. Mello https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/fd8003073e343572ea4b0d371566318d.jpg d36aade3add45618376dd5bb9d236e88 https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/84bf395ca77754b3345da5e8e029c5d4.jpg a42455caea2fd025bd17caad2784381c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Vol. No./Issue No. Volume and issue number for the newspaper (if available) vol. 68, issue 5 Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Friedrich, Alex Text Any textual data included in the document [first page] [heading] Case shows changing role of governors in death appeals By John D. McKinnon Herald Legal Correspondent [start of the first column] TALLAHASSEE -- Joe Spaziano, scheduled to die this month in Florida's electric chair, is a wrongly-convicted man, his attorney argues, a mistake the state wants to bury. But What's just as bad, his lawyer says, is the way Florida officials are going about it: By using secret evidence to justify Spaziano's execution, they're burying the whole case. "A constitutional abomination," gripes Michael Mello, Spaziano's volunteer lawyer. Without intending to, state officials also have thrust the Spa- [end of the first column] [start of the second column] How should inmates' belated claims of innocence be handled? [text] ziano case into the middle of one of the hottest debates in death penalty law. The question is this: As more and more condemned inmates raise belated and frequently bogus claims of innocence, how should the system handle them? In particular, as judges make it [start of the third column] harder for inmates to raise such claims in court, how should governors still have unchecked powers in matters of life and death, like kings of old? Or should governors be forced to hear the prisoners' pleas all over again? In Florida, the question came up when Gov. Lawton Chiles signed a new death warrant for Spaziano based on the results of a confidential investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Chiles asked for the investigation after the key [end of the third column] PLEASE SEE SPAZIANO, 10A [heading] Critics question use of 'secret' evidence to justify execution SPAZIANO, FROM 1A [start of the first column] witness in Spaziano's trial 20 years ago recanted his testimony. Spaziano, an Outlaws motorcycle gang member, was convicted in 1975 of murdering an 18-year-old Orlando woman, Laura Harberts. But the key witness at trial, Tony DiLisio, said in June that he wasn't shown Harberts' body by Spaziano as he had testified, but was manipulated by police and a government-hired hypnotist. According to summaries of the FDLE investigation, the agency has located people who said they recalled hearing statements over the years that implicated Spaziano. None of the witnesses have been identified, none of their statements have been disclosed. Few, if any, of the statements appear to be admissible in court because they're hearsay. Those that might be admissible come from a former biker who's in a federal witness protection program -- just the sort of witness that juries often disbelieve. The state's Public Records Law specifically allows clemency records to be kept secret and Chiles says he intends to keep the names and statements in the investigation confidential. Some of the witnesses were promised anonymity, out of fear of the Outlaws, officials say. That hasn't been enough to satisfy some death penalty critics. "It seems as if there's something that he's hiding," said Kica Matos, research director for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's Capital Punishment Project. "It sure ain't fair," said William T. Geimer, a Washington and Lee University law professor and nationally recognized death penalty expert. Maybe. But is it legal? Based on the courts' traditional approach to the death penalty experts say, the answer would appear to be: Yes. "The problem is that the courts -- the federal courts and the Supreme Court especially -- have always been extremely reluctant to say anything to governors about how to conduct their business at the end of a death-penalty case," says Hugo Adam Bedau, a Tufts University professor. That tradition is under growing pressure, experts say, as condemned inmates raise more and more claims of innocence, and federal judges are finding more and more ways to avoid hearing them. Such claims have been multiplying as wily death-penalty appeal lawyers shift their focus from attacking capital-punishment laws to attacking the facts of their clients' cases. And innocence claims have a [end of the first column] [start of the second column] big advantage, appeals lawyers have found: After 10 or 15 years, even solid murder cases become vulnerable to assault. Evidence corrodes or breaks down. Police lose their files. A surprising number of people turn up who are able or willing to take the rap -- for instance, other inmates who are suffering from terminal illness or who've died. That has happened more than once in recent years, to the enormous frustration of officials like Chiles. "The [death penalty lawyers] are good," Chiles said in a recent interview with the Herald editorial board. "They have something in every one of these cases." While Florida's Supreme Court has remained relatively [end of the second column] [start of the third column] open to new claims of innocence, many other judges -- especially federal judges -- are getting fed up. "They've become convinced that all the innocence issues anyone raises are fraudulent," says Bruce Ledewitz, a Duquesne University law professor and a noted capital punishment opponent. The problem is, Ledewitz argues, the federal courts "haven't yet come up with any system that winnow out the good claims from the bad ones. They've just decided to execute everyone." The federal courts' resistance to innocence claims crystalized in a case called Herrera vs. Collins, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1993. In the Herrera case, the high court [end of the third column] [start of the fourth column] decided that federal courts didn't have to hear most belated claims of innocence in old capital cases because that's what state governors were for. And that's created the latest legal issue for Spaziano. "The Herrera decision blesses governors as a part of the capital punishment process," explains Geimer, the Washington and Lee University professor. "So if they are now going to be a part of the process, the next question is, are there going to be rules? Can you have a secret investigation?" Contends Daniel T. Kobil, a law professor at Capital University in Ohio: "It seems to me that if the governor's clemency power is to serve as a failsafe in our constitutional system, it has to be administered in a fundamentally [end of the fourth column] [start of the fifth column] fair way. This one-sided, secretive procedure the Florida governor is engaging in seems to me to fall far short of that." Spaziano's lawyer, Vermont law professor Mello, is making exactly that argument to the state Supreme Court in seeking to se the report. "He doesn't have any right to look at it," replies Dexter Douglass, the governor's general counsel. "The governor's not a court." Mello is a former West Palm Beach public defender. [end of article] Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Case shows changing role of governors in death appeals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McKinnon, John D. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived McKinnon, John D. "Case shows changing role of governors in death appeals." The Miami Herald, September 2, 1995, A1. Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-09-02 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 JPGs 300 DPI Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Tallahassee, FL Description An account of the resource As a result of the 1993 U.S. Supreme Court case, Herrera vs. Collins, state governors became the designated figures to acknowledge the most belated claims of innocence in old capital cases. However, after Tony DiLisio recanted his previous testimony, which incriminated Joe Spaziano, Gov. Lawton Chiles signed a new death warrant for Spaziano based on evidence gathered from a confidential investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. By using secret evidence to reinforce Spaziano’s execution, death-penalty critics believe Chiles’ actions to be unconstitutional. Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment Spaziano, Joe https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/b0d61b976116f4f096ea1bcb0d1bc3ac.jpg 4057d8de327a0dace9423cdd34bd2f8a https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/46ac0fe87f3cbe04311a7ed948745ebf.jpg f2c36f6c9d91c4aaa390f3283218d903 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper article Text Any textual data included in the document [Heading] Spaziano lawyer: Hearing a ‘sham’ By John D. McKinnon Herald Legal Correspondent [subheading] Indefinite stay of execution demanded [Beginning of article] Tallahassee-Hours after scoring a victory in his legal fight to avoid the electric chair, “Crazy Joe” Spaziano on Saturday faced the possibility that his gains could be erased - by his own lawyer. Late Friday afternoon, the Florida Supreme Court granted Spaziano an evidentiary hearing on his claim that the state’s key witness lied at his murder trial 20 years ago. But just before midnight Friday, Spaziano’s outspoken defense attorney, Michael Mello, faxed a harshly worded response to the high court, demanding an indefinite stay of Spaziano’s scheduled execution and announcing that he would not participate in the evidentiary hearing, which he termed a “sham.” Mello complained that he won’t have the time or resources to prepare for the hearing, ordered to be held by Friday. Spaziano is scheduled to be executed Sept. 21. “If this court intends to kill this innocent man by depriving him of the effective assistance of counsel, then it will do so without my complicity,” Mello wrote. Mello is a law professor who lives in Vermont. He said in a telephone interview late Friday that it is “obviously impossible for me to be able to do any kind of meaningful hearing with an active death warrant pending.” Mello’s threatened boycott of next week’s hearing doesn’t necessarily leave Spaziano unrepresented. In its opinion, the Supreme Court also ordered the state law office that defends most Death Row inmates to help Mello. But there’s no guarantee that state lawyers will participate. Mello is doing everything he can to keep the state office, known as the Capital Collateral Representative, out of the case. Mello says CCR allowed an investigator to try to pressure the state’s key witness against Spaziano and that the agency is overworked and has failed to follow up on leads in the past. Mello, who once worked for CCR, does little to disguise his contempt for it. CCR lawyers have also expressed doubts about the feasibility of preparing adequately for the evidentiary hearing in less than a week. “Trying to put together this hearing in seven days is just not the way things should be done,” Martin J. McClain, CCR’s chief assistant, said Saturday. But McClain did not threaten to boycott the hearing. He declined to comment on Mello’s allegations about CCR misconduct. The Supreme Court implicitly rejected [end of page] [Top of page] Sunday, September 10, 1995, The Herald 7B [Article title] Spaziano lawyers: Hearing a ‘sham’ [Spaziano, from 6B] those allegations in Friday’s opinion. The big fear about the hearing for both Mello and McClain: that prosecutors will use controversial secret evidence during the hearing to rebut their claims on behalf of Spaziano. [subheading] Unveiling secret evidence [beginning of article text] The existence of the secret evidence came to light in August, when Gov. Lawton Chiles cited it to justify signing a fifth warrant for Spaziano’s execution. Chiles ordered the secret investigation after the state’s key witness, Anthony DiLisio, told a Herald reporter that his testimony at the trial was false. DiLisio testified at the trial in 1975 that Spaziano, an Outlaw biker gang leader, took him to a rural Orlando trash dump and showed him the body of a murdered 18-year-old woman, Laura Harberts. But the governor has steadfastly refused to make the report public, citing promises of anonymity made to the witness, as well as state laws that allow him to keep clemency matters secret. [subheading] Fear of an ambush [beginning of article text] Spaziano’s lawyers worry that they’ll be ambushed at the hearing by the secret evidence. It’s likely that Spaziano’s lawyers will go to court again to seek the report before next week’s hearing. Their fears appeared to be justified late Friday, when the governor’s chief lawyer said it’s possible that some of the witnesses who were interviewed for the secret report will testify at next week’s hearing. “That will be up to the state attorney’s office” in Seminole County, said Dexter Douglass, Chiles’ general counsel. How could local prosecutors find the witness if the governor promised them anonymity, as Chiles has said? “What we promised is what I think I’ve said all along - that we would not reveal their identity to the general public,” Douglass said. [subheading] Discrediting the key witness [beginning of article text] When asked again if the state would reveal the names of the witness to prosecutors, Douglass added that local prosecutors “could find the witnesses the same way we did.” The secret witnesses include several people who recall hearing DiLisio or Spaziano make statements that implicated Spaziano. Those witnesses probably couldn’t be used to convict Spaziano, because their testimony would be hearsay. But they could be used to discredit DiLisio’s recantation of his trial testimony and block Spaziano’s efforts to obtain a new trial. The state’s Supreme Court’s order for a hurry-up hearing on Spaziano’s claims runs counter to its recent decisions in other capital cases in which last-minute claims were raised. In several recent cases, the high court has ordered stays of execution so trial courts could hold full-blown evidentiary hearings. The difference in this case, apparently, was Mello’s failure to file his request in a trial court - the usual route for last-ditch claims. Instead, for reasons that remain unclear, Mello file directly in the state Supreme Court, a move that the high court determined “clearly not authorized.” [Photo caption] ‘If this court intends to kill this innocent man by depriving him of the effective assistance of counsel, then it will do so without my complicity.’ Michael Mello, Spaziano’s lawyer [End of article] Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Wright, Devin Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Spaziano lawyer: Hearing a 'sham' Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment. Description An account of the resource This newspaper article from "The Herald," in Tallahassee, FL describes Michael Mello's fight for a stay of execution for his client, "Crazy Joe" Spaziano. His fight was being challenged by the state's "secret evidence" that was to prove his guilt, after the key witness admitted to false testimony in the original trial 20 years before. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McKinnon, John D. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-09-10 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 JPGs 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Tallahassee, FL capital punishment Crazy Joe Spaziano Michael Mello trial https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/e97ad035787b82acd2cc25603544de4e.jpg e8014d43b6a004cfa43a7e129850179b https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/884fa9e95bc0de9de1bdaaa35704e9e2.jpg 3adb010b7e787a0715e8e87854412ad3 https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/a0cd23992e7bd51e4ab0c89bf8e13885.jpg 49215f1b80a8991144bf9ffb7ff97864 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Leahey, Jordan Text Any textual data included in the document [start title page] [Name of Newpaper] The Miami Herald [heading underneath name] The Foremost Daily Newspaper of Florida [edition and date] Keys Edition – Sunday, December 1, 1996 [end title page] [Title] ‘Crazy Joe’ case takes bizarre turn [Subtitle]Justices won’t hear cops’ teeth theory [Authors] John D. McKinnon and Lori Rozsa [start page one] At 9 a.m. Wednesday, the seven justices of the Florida Supreme Court will part a black curtain and take their seats to hear the case of Florida vs. Joseph Robert Spaziano. What they won’t hear is the state’s latest theory in the bizarre case. Call it necrodentistry. Seeing its original murder case crumble in a Seminole County courtroom, Central Florida police are trying to link Spaziano to another unsolved murder. They now say the diminutive biker could have yanked the teeth from one corpse and put them in a second victim’s jaw. That might explain why the teeth don’t match. Farfetched? Sure – but [Footnote] Please see Spaziano 28A [end page one] [start page two] [Footnote] Spaziano, from 1A that’s nothing new in this case, which began with a psychic driving around the countryside with a skull in her lap and hypnosis of the state’s star witness. For Spaziano, now age 50 after 20 years on Death Row, the post-mortem dental theory is merely the latest indication that he still faces a long uphill climb proving his innocence. A jury convicted him in 1976 of the murder of Laura Harberts, an 18-year-old hospital clerk. Over the years, Spaziano survived five black-bordered death warrants. Last January, Circuit Court Judge O.H. Eaton Jr. conducted a six-day hearing in Seminole County and concluded, “In the United States of America every person, no matter how unsavory, is entitled to due process of law and fair trial. The defendant received neither.” He ordered a new trial. The state appealed, and that’s the issue before the Florida Supreme Court on Wednesday. Orlando attorney James M. Russ will argue for the defense. Margene Roper of the State Attorney’s Office will represent the prosecution. In the past 11 months, the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office investigators have labored to find evidence to make the Harberts case stick against the scrawny, cockeyed Outlaw biker, known as “Crazy Joe.” They visited Spaziano’s ex-wife, Linda, in South Florida. “They asked me a million questions. They believe he’s involved in lots of murders. He’s no killer. He’s no rapist, He is just an a------,” she said. “I have the feeling they’re looking hither and yon for some-thing to try him on,” said Gregg Thomas. He and Steve Hanlon, pro bono attorneys from the lar firm of Holland & Knight, also represent Spaziano. “It’s a vendetta,” charged Michael Mello, Spaziano’s on-again, off-again appellate attorney between 1983 and 1995. [heading] State denies ‘vendetta’ Florida officials deny it. Says Dexter Douglass, Gov. Lawton Chiles’ general counsel: “I’d venture to say that the state’s lawyers are more interested in reaching a just verdict than they are in vendettas.” But two factors intensify the emotional impact in the law enforcement community. One is Spaziano’s proud membership in the Outlaws, a notoriously brutal motorcycle gang. The other is Mello, Spaziano’s former lawyer. A law professor and former Florida Death Row defender, Mello is a harsh and persistent critic of capital punishment. Already, the Spaziano case has made Mello into something of a celebrity in highbrow legal circles. Last weekend, for example, he presented a paper on Spaziano’s case to the American Society of Criminologists’ annual meeting in Chicago. Police and prosecutors would hate to lose this one. To do so would put a serial killer that much closer to freedom, they say. [heading] Started with a corpse It began Aug. 23, 1973, when a man spotted a skeleton at a dump near Altamonte Springs. A dentist identified it as Harberts, who had disappeared a couple weeks earlier. The case went unsolved for months. Then amid a spate of publicity about crimes by local Outlaws, police got a call from a young woman who claimed that Spaziaono had raped her. That led police to her stepson, Tony DiLisio, a 16-year-old doper. Spaziano used to hang around his father’s boat marina. Tony offered little that the police could use. But the teenager seemed eager to help nail Spaziano. Finally, after police hypnotized him twice and took him to the dump, DiLisio suddenly remembered the biker showing him Harberts’ body. A jury in Sanford believed him in 1976, convicted and recommended life in prison. Judge Robert McGregor overruled and sentenced Spaziano to death. [heading] Witness recants On June 9, 1995, DiLisio recanted – 16 days before Spaziano’s scheduled execution. DiLisio said he had been a scared, troubled teen back then. He was only trying to get in good with police and his abusive father, who bore a grudge against Spaziano for having an affair with his wife. DiLisio might have had another reason for concocting a tale. He, too, was having an affair with his father’s bride-to-be, Keppie and secretly ached over the revelation that Spaziano was his rival, he says. After Eaton ordered a new trial, the Florida Attorney General appealed. And now the state Supreme Court must decide. [heading] ‘Decision will be final’ For the state, “the Supreme Court’s decision will be final for all practical purposes,” said Assistant Attorney General Richard Martell. Despite Eaton’s opinion, Spaziano’s lawyers wonder if some-how they will lose again, as they have so often in the past. Lately they’ve had one more thing to worry about. Orange County Circuit Court Judge Dorothy Russell recently read the testimony that Eaton heard. She came to exactly the opposite conclusion – that DiLisio also was a key witness in that case and now says he lied then, too. If the state wins before the high court, Spaziano could be back on Death Row. Chiles hasn’t changed his mind about Spaziano’s guilt, says Douglass, the governor’s top legal adviser. He’ll leave it to the courts. If Spaziano wins, the state must retry him within 90 days. The evidence is thin. The original trial prosecutor, Claude Van Hook, said that without DiLisio, there was “no case.” Other evidence: The victim’s roommate and boyfriend identified Spaziano – 2 ½ years after she disappeared – as a “traveling cook” who came to the apartment looking for Harberts. In a new trail, DiLisio’s original testimony could be presented – with a little legal maneuvering – although it would be subject to a strong attack by the defense. “It certainly is going to be a monumental undertaking to try to put something together,” Seminole County prosecutor Tom Hastings said. [heading] Linked to other murders? If the state can’t convict Spaziano for the Harberts murder, police want to connect him to other crimes. [image caption] Sentenced to death 20 years ago: Joseph Spaziano. [end page two] [start page three] Among the possibilities: [bullet point] The murders on New Year’s Eve 1974 of an Outlaw motorcyclist and his girlfriend in Chicago. Although police there cleared the case with another suspect years ago, a woman who lived with Spaziano and an Outlaw informant implicated Spaziano in 1995. [bullet point] Two unrelated murders of women in Orlando. “The information we received from the streets would indicate Spaziano was responsible for their deaths,” said Sgt. Dan Nazarchuk of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. The problem, he says, is that valuable witnesses are scared to testify. [bullet point] A second skeleton found at the dump in 1973 along with Harberts, never identified. [heading] A second skeleton Earlier this year, Seminole County deputies Ray Parker and Ralph Salerno reinterviewed witnesses from the original Harberts investigation. They took a statement from a woman who knew Spaziano then. She said that in the spring of 1973, she saw Spaziano at Daytona Beach with a “a young girl” riding on the back of his motorcycle. The girl asked her to hold her purse “for safekeeping,” according to the Seminole County sheriff’s office. The girl didn’t pick up her purse after the motorcycle ride. Five days later, she said, Spaziano showed up at her door “and demanded the purse.” She turned it over but not before peeking inside for the identification. She told Salerno and Parker that she remembered only that the girl was from Ann Arbor, Mich. Two months ago, Seminole police asked forensic anthropologist Dr. William Maples to examine the unidentified remains. They had been examined before. In 1973, Lawrence Angel of the Smithsonian Institution’s Department of Anthropology concluded that the body was that of a white female 16 to 21, about five feet five inches, slender build. She had crooked lower teeth and two fillings in her upper teeth. According to a 1996, press release from the Seminole sheriff’s office, Maples concluded that the girl was 15 to 16 years old, five feet seven inches, 110 pounds and had crooked teeth. [heading] Help in ID Based on Maples’ description, a police artist drew a sketch of what the girl might have looked like. Seminole police asked Ann Arbor police and TV stations for help in identification. Deputies in Washtenaw County, where Ann Arbor is, came up with a missing persons case from 1970, three years before the Daytona Beach motorcycle ride. In April 1970, Cynthia Coon, 14, disappeared on her way to school. She was five feet four inches and weighed 110. She “looked a little bit” like the police artist sketch, Seminole sheriff’s spokesman Ed McDonough said. Dental records could establish and identification – the skull of the skeleton had crooked teeth and fillings, easy to match. But they didn’t match. Cynthia Coon had never been to a dentist in her life. Her father, Dr. William Coon, a pathologist, said “she had straight teeth,” no fillings. How to reconcile that? [heading] ‘Someone else’s teeth’ McDonough said Spaziano “had the habit of removing teeth from his victims.” Those found in the skeleton “probably weren’t her teeth. They could very well be someone else’s teeth.” Maples said that if anyone had tried to adhere teeth from one body into the jaw of this body, it would have showed. “If the corpse had fillings in places where there should not be fillings, there is a problem.” Maples said. Seminole police want the Coon family to give a blood sample for DNA testing. The family has not consented. McDonough still sees Spaziano as a suspect. “He was the type that removed teeth and put them back in other victims,” McDonough said. “He was very sick that way.” [image caption] Will argue for defense: Attorney James M. Russ. [end page three] Student Editor of the Digital Item Dickinson, Terra Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Crazy Joe' Case Takes Bizarre Turn Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McKinnon, John D. Rozsa, Lori Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived McKinnon, John D. and Lori Rozsa. “‘Crazy Joe’ Case Takes Bizarre Turn: Justice Won’t Hear Cops’ Teeth Story.” The Miami Herald (Miami, Florida), December 1, 1996, p. 1. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-12-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 3 JPGs 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Miami, FL https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/397570fd9c4cd654bedcd3c1ef60b040.jpg dbc25e6c6991b1426211b17ab1257bb4 https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/520ba00675e38908b16c1c54f33781c1.jpg 5cd220059532b25b07ac75d5ca3a8758 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 1, 1976-1979 Text Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. May, Grace Text Any textual data included in the document The reverberations of Campus Security's "continuing investigateion" into the illicit drug situation at Mary Washington College spread throughout the MWC community last week as it became apparent that the Madison arrests could be only the beginning. The legality and general wisom of the arrest of five students, the suspension of four of them and the questioning of others were debated at impromptu meetings, in classrooms, in the SA Executive Cabinet and Senate. A petition drive was initiated and a rally was held.<br />     Tutt Stapp, President of the MWC Chapter of the National Organization for the Reforma of Marijuana Laws, has offered her organization's aid to the students who have been arrested and suspended from school. Stapp hopes that the state NORML will provide supportive legal and financial help. One legal advisor for NORML told Stapp that the five students should attempt to secure a legal injunction against their suspension. This advisor expressed the opinion that such a quest stood fair chanced of success.<br />     President Woodard met with the SA Executive Cabinet not long after the raid. At that meeting, Woodard informed the student leaders that a raid had occured and that students had been arrested. The President answered a few questions posed by tne Cabinet members.<br />     The Executive Cabinet then held a meeting of its own. SA Whip Eric Wootten made a motion that Cabinet issue a statement protesting the arrests and suspensions. SA Vice President Steve Schlimgen agreed tha some sort of protest was in order, but argued that none could be effective until all of the case's facts were known to the Executive Cabinet. The other members agreed, and Wootten's motion was tabled.<br />     Wootten, unsatisfied with the Cabinet's decision, drew up a petition. Aided by a number of other students,Wootten circulated his petition around campus. The document read" "On March 24, 1979, State, City and College Police entered Madison Hall with a warrant for the seizure of marijuana and related paraphanalia and the arrest of alleged distributors and possessors of marijuana. Since the trial has been set for Mary, the guilt of the accused students has not yet been established.<br />     "We, the undersigned students of Mary Washington College, do hereby protest and demand the immediate reversal of the unjustified suspension of said individuals."<br />     President Woodard told a gathering of Madison residents on March 26 that the petition would have "absolutely no effect" on his decisions in the case. Woodard said that "the suspension will not be reversed, even if you get every student on this campus to sign your petition."<br />Two resolutions relating to the Madison raid and its aftermath were suggested at the March 27 meeting of the SA Student S ate. One, introduced by Tracy Hudson (Hamlet House), called for the creation of a Senate body to investigate the legality of suspending a student before any sort of hearing is held. Hudon's motion was referred to the Senate Special Projects Committee. Special Projects will begin its investigation by contacting the American Civil Liberites Union.<br />     The second Senate motion was made by John Shumacher (Westmoreland). He suggested that the Senate officially endorse the Wootten petition protesting the suspensions; further, Shumacher wanted the Senate to make some sort of protest of its own. The motion was tabled (two to one) by a roll call vote; several senators expressed the opinion that it would be inappropriate for the Senate to issue an official protest until the Special Projects Committee completed its investigation.<br />     One response to the Madison arrests and suspensions seemed to some observers uncharacteristic of the Somnolent Seventies in general and of MWC in particular: a protest rally was planned. An organizational meeting on March 28 drew approximately 50 students. The group, led by Eric Wootten, agreed that a "gathering" would be held on Westmoreland Circle on Friday, March 30, at 3:45.<br />     The Westmoreland meeting opened with a suggestion that the rally not be held because of the possible detrimental effects it could have on the cases of the students presently suspended from school. One observer argued that "the guys are just scared; they don't want to make noise, and they don't want you to make noise." Another student responded that "what we are dealing with here is a principle-the principle of suspension without a trial. There comes a time when a statement of principle must be made. We are not protesting these individual cases; we are protesting the concept behind them."<br />     After a general concensus was reached that some sort of demonstration would be appropriate, the question became: exactly what is the arim of the protest? One student appeared to express the sentiments of the group when he said "we are not protesting the present drug laws; we are not even really protesting these busts. Rather, we are protesting the fact that these guys have been suspended without first receiving a trial of hearing. In effect, Woodard is saying that these students are guilty until proven innocent; at this point, it has not even been established that any illicit drugs were confiscated in the raid. The Police Crime Lab won't issue a report on the evidence seized for four to six weeks."<br />     The remainder of the meeting was taken up with the logistical problems of planning a successful demonstration: publicity, the procurement of speakers, the legality of the rally itself. The gathering ended on an optimistic note, with all present pledging to help prepare for Friday's event. Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shock Waves Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mello, Michael Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 JPEGs Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Fredericksburg, VA Description An account of the resource This document is a newspaper article by Michael Mello describing a brief background of a investigation of a drug arrest and the implications it had on five students it involved. The four of the five students were suspended and the rest were questioned. Some of the Mary Washington College students were in protest of the right to suspension without having first a trial to prove whether or not they are innocent until proven guilty. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Mello, Michael. "Shock Waves." Subject The topic of the resource College students--Drug use--United States Mary Washington College National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws student activism Student Rights Woodard https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/f3995f39ba1b7eefdfa190b8acf0ba0f.jpg 17dbc5b3a05cf9224b7d9791bf2cc395 https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/7689f7d7cb27dd4f6d8ec2c512c8f657.jpg 99627ce902a10d32c1bf954d8981c750 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 1, 1976-1979 Text Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data newspaper Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Parsons, Carolyn Text Any textual data included in the document College Police officers have questioned three female Mary Washington College students about their involvement with one of the students recently arrested in connection with the drug raid on Madison Hall. <br /><br />The police, who tied the three women to the Madison situation by means of physical evidence confiscated during the raid, declined comment. The three were questioned by the police on March 28, and all invoked their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.<br /><br />During the March 24 drug raid on Madison, police found three photographs. Each photo depicted a male lighting "bongs" for three different women. Two days after the raid the male in the photographs was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana and paraphernalia. And two days after that, the three women depicted in the photos were questioned by the College Police. The bong itself was not confiscated in the March 24 raid. <br /><br />one of the three women was interrogated told the Bullet that " the cops just wanted information from us so that they can nail (our friend) in Madison. They just don't have enough evidence on the guys and they wanted our help. I don't think they'll try to get us also, but we could be subpoenaed to testify against the Madison guys."<br /><br />Another of the three female students who were questioned by College Police asserted that "those pictures are worthless as evidence, and the cops know it. There's no way to tell from them that we were smoking anything in these bongs other than cigarette tobacco-which I believe, is still legal even in the state of Virginia."<br /><br />The three women have contacted a local attorney for advice. One of the students said that their lawyer had advised them that they were required to talk to "no one-not the cops, not Woodard, not any other campus officials. Unless we're subpoenaed, then we might begin to worry." Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource More Students Questioned Subject The topic of the resource Marijuana Michael Mello Description An account of the resource A newspaper article written by Michael Mello that describes students being questioned about police over suspected drug usage on campus. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mello, Michael Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Mello, Michael. "More Students Questioned". The Bullet (Fredericksburg, VA), n.d. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 jpegs 300 dpi Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Fredericksburg, VA Marijuana Michael A. Mello student discipline https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/9c161b76eaf50dc1c3af3e03742b8d95.jpg 72cb6a8701476fd97e7c421e1bab76e2 https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/34c5b8ba3c624b9e8d6c193a2b768134.jpg c85742f05d84966929059cbeaa9c9356 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 1, 1976-1979 Text Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Carretto, Suzannah Text Any textual data included in the document Ninety-three percent of those students responding to a recent S.A. Senate survey indicated that they feel that there is a need for more open student body meetings. One such meeting was held on Tuesday, February 13 at 7:30 p.m. Out of a total student population of 2360, approximately 30 attended. <br /><br />The meeting took place immediately after MWC President Prince B. Woodward addressed the Student Senate. Many people at the open student body meeting expressed the opinion that the content of some questions asked of Woodward at the earlier meeting were pretty and that their presentation was immature. Others disagreed, arguing that the issues presented to Woodward were important to the MWC academic community. Still others asserted that the issues themselves were important, but that the students were not following the "proper channels" in dealing with them. For example, it was suggested that the absence of washers and dryers in Tyler and of locks on the bedroom doors of Marye were not matters to be raised in a forum with the President of the college. <br /><br />The open student body meeting began with a short address by Patrick Everett, S.A. Academic Affairs Chairman. Everett stated that plans were being made to convert ACL Lounge A into an all-night study room. The room is scheduled to open Wednesday on a probationary basis. <br /><br />Following this, S.A. Vice President Steve Schlimgen opened the floor for questions about his performance in office. It was at this point that the debate concerning the quality of the questions asked of Woodward at the Senate meeting began. One student said that "Woodward gave us one hour and we blew it; we wasted it with petty gripes rather than centering on the big problems that face MWC." <br /><br />Another student, taking exception, argued that these "petty problems" were really the tangible things that directly affect the quality of like at MWC. She felt that the meeting with Woodward had been productive. "Our goal tonight was to open lines of communication between the President and the students. We have made him aware of our problems and he listened." <br /><br />The question then became: How did Woodward respond to the student views presented to him? Some felt that his attitude was condescending and evasive, that he interacted with the audience at the meeting as a father does when explaining things to a small child. Others felt the opposite: that the President had been open and honest, explaining what he could and promising to look into that which he could not explain offhand. <br /><br />Despite Schlimgen's attempts to give the meeting some semblance of coherence, heated discussion continued between members of the audience. A matter raised at a recent Senate meeting was brought up: a student left MWC under what some believe to be suspicious circumstances. One member of the audience argued that the entire question is a private matter between the former students and the college administration. The point was then made that the ex-student herself had requested an investigation of the circumstances surrounding her departure; hence, it was a matter within S.A.'s jurisdiction. Student Association President Laura Buchanan advised the audience that she and Campus Judicial Chairman Jane Daniels had already contacted all parties involved (including the former student), that their investigation was complete and that there were no irregularities in the student's departure from MWC. At least one member of the audience remained unsatisfied, however, and suggested that the investigation should continue. <br /><br />Three issues were raised toward the end of the meeting. First Schlimgen announced that Dean Clement had refused to join President Woodward in addressing the Senate because of the treatment she received the last time she met the S.A. Senate. Schlimgen added that he feels Clement is the recipient of much "unjustified grief--it's her job to enforce the rules set up by the B.O.V." <br /><br />Second, Judicial Chairman Jane Daniels reported that the present system of monetary fines for judicial offenses in ineffective and that more cases would come to trial in the future. <br /><br />Finally, S.A. President Laura Buchanan revealed that Greg Sokolowski, President of the Day Student Association, recently told her that the Day Student Association is ineffective and should be abolished. She also noted that several commuter students had complained about the job Sokolowski is doing as President. One member of the audience suggested that the interests of the commuter students could be better served by removing Sokolowski as president than by abolishing the entire Day Student Association. Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Turnout Small at Student Meeting Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1979-02-22 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 JPEGs 300 dpi Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Fredericksburg, VA Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Mello, Michael. "Turnout Small at Student Meeting." The Bullet (VA), February 2, 1979. Description An account of the resource This <em>Bullet</em> article discusses the desire for more "open student body" meetings, according to a student survey. One such meeting took place on February 13, 1979, although out of a total student number of over 2,300, only 30 students attended. The main area of discussion regarded a previous meeting with MWC President Prince B. Woodward. Discussion dwelt mainly on the types of questions students asked of Woodward and opinions of his responses to those questions. There was no consensus among the students. The article goes on to describe other topics of discussion and points of contention. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mello, Michael Subject The topic of the resource Mary Washington College, Student Meetings Jane Daniels Mary Washington Bullet Mary Washington College Michael A. Mello Michael Mello Prince B. Woodward Student Association University of Mary Washington https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/7bd974781af3a5fab57655df9b2b0e19.jpg 105d64f78911b4da8284f53e480cf049 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 3, 1995 Text Text Any textual data included in the document To the Editor: According to Edwin Vaile's satirical letter (Forum, April 5) , Donella Meadows' recent column observed that "criminals" might actually be human beings as well-- an insight lost on the likes of scholars who prefer car- toonish views of "them." Folks such as Ms. Meadows actually let their opinions be influenced by conducting their own field research-- i.e., actually meeting, getting to know and (gasp!) perhaps even coming to like and respect the shared humanity of people whom society would prefer to write off as alien species and forget about. I have been a fan of Ms. Meadows' writing for years, and she recently granted me permission to use one of her past pieces in my forthcoming book on capital pun- ishment. But I missed this column, and I am grateful to Mr. Vaile for bringing it to my attention. Full disclosure: For the past 12 years, I have worked as an attorney on behalf of Florida death row inmates. Over that period, I have come to know a fair number of people who the Sunshine State is trying to kill-- along with the families and loved ones who were victims for my clients' crimes. The only generalization I can make about the killers I have known is that no generalizations really work. They're surprisingly random slice of American culture, with one only clear unifying characteristic being that virtually all of them came from backgrounds of extreme poverty and family dysfunction. Not that that explains away or justifies their hideous crimes (except for the surprising--to my mind, at least -- number who are factually innocent of the crimes for which they are to condemned to die,i.e., they didn't do it, period). And as often as not, they are ashamed of their backgrounds and reluctant to let me raise their histories as legal issues, even when raising such claims might well get them off death row. They'd rather die in the electric chair than to let their lawyers tell the world about how they were raped by their parents or about how their family lived in tar-paper shanties and subsisted on dog food. The fact is that prisoners are more like us normal peo- ple than we often want to admit or acknowledge. Some- times they are too recognizable for out comfort. "Ted" Bundy, for instance, remains our culture's leading metaphor for incomprehensible evil and horror, even half a decade after his execution. If you were to meet Bundy in your local bar, you'd never know he has confessed to many, many murders. You'd think he was just like you, and for the most part you'd be right. That's the scariest part: not that he's so different from us, but rather that he's so similar. As we are similar to him. There is no "us" and "them." We're all part of "us" MICHAEL MELLO Professor of Law Vermont Law School South Royalton Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Brooks, Anna Student Editor of the Digital Item Dickinson, Terra Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Yes, Inmates Are Human Beings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mello, Michael Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Mello, Michael. “Yes, Inmates are Human Beings”. Valley News, April16, 1995. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-04-16 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 JPGs 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant West Lebanon, New Hampshire attorney capital punishment Florida Death Row Individual Rights Inmate appeals law school Letter to the Editor Michael A. Mello New Hampshire newspaper Ted Bundy Vermont https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/29dff63ea4bf031528d23136d9fdff69.jpg 337b98eaf72f25d6baf7ad2c1be510aa Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 3, 1995 Text Text Any textual data included in the document Your "Kill the Lawyers" editorial, along with the daily televised antics of O.J. Simpson's all-star cast of defense lawyers, reveals much of what is wrong with the legal profession today. F. Lee Bailey's cynical playing of the race card suggests that the public's distrust of lawyers flows not from the fact that people don't understand what lawyers do, but rather that the public does understand. David von Drehle's recent book. "Among the Lowest of the Dead: The Culture of Death Row," provides a useful antidote to the public's revulsion with the culture of lawyers. Von Drehle explores Florida's recent experiences with capital punishment, and he does so by focusing on the people- lawyers, mostly, but by no means exclusively-who work within the reality of capital punishment as a legal and political system of deciding who dies, The book focuses on one character who was at the center of Florida's attempts in recent years to make executions a reality. Craig Bernard, who spent his entire legal career working on behalf of Florida's condemned population, was the architect and driving force behind the loosely affiliated group of lawyers who demanded that Flordia keep its promises of fairness to those whom the state was trying so hard to annihilate. Mr. Barnard did this work as a public defender, working for the lawyerly equivalent of sub-minimum wage; he always worked in self-imposed obscurity, insisting that others- including myself, during the two years I served as a public defender under Mr. Barnard-recuvebe the credit for victories for which he was really the person responsible. Significantly, Mr. Barnard's job was not, as you quoted Swift, to prove that "white is black and black is white, according to how they are paid." Rather, he always taught that our job, as lawyers for death row, was to fill out the full picture of the person whom the state wanted to kill, a portrait the seldom emerges at capital trails in the southern jurisdictions that comprise the Death Belt. It was all about situating the crime- and the criminal- in context.Mr. Barnard's aim was to tell the prisoner's whole story, in the hopes that such a full view would make it less easy to reduce his clients to one hideous crime they committed in one day of their lives (except for the ones who were innocent). Whenever I hear people trashing lawyers, I think about Craig Barnard. With the publication of Von Drehle's book, I hope that others will as well. Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Williams, Megan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "A Lawyer Who Served Life" Subject The topic of the resource Lawyers Description An account of the resource A newspaper article from the "Rutland Daily Herald" by Michael Mello. It is four paragraphs long. It discusses the public's view of lawyers and why they are not trusted Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mello, Michael Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Mellow, Michael. “A Lawyer Who Served Life.” <em>Rutland Daily Herald</em>, April 5, 1976. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1976-03-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 300 dpi 1 JPG Language A language of the resource English https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/94fe5f41f242c52c70a91a8354fca4ed.jpg 2d05388c6e7e6100b31f225b640ee820 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document Murder case demonstrates sabotage of justice / Public contempt justified in Spaziano delay The criminal justice system is broken. It was not broken by cops or criminals, by crime victims or taxpayers. It was broken by judges, lawyers, legislators and ideologues who scorn the democratic process. The case of Joseph “Crazy Joe” Spaziano, currently of Florida’s death row, is a case in point. How long does it take to bring justice to a vicious murderer? In Spaziano’s case, the answer is 20 years and, as of this writing, still counting. The answer, if a judge is foolish enough to grant this psychopath a new trial, may be never. Spaziano, a motorcycle gang member, was convicted in 1976 of the murder of an 18-year-old girl. He was sentenced to death. In 1996, lawyers, some of whom are ideologically opposed to the death penalty, and the Miami Herald newspaper are crowing that poor Spaziano is an innocent man. Spaziano has also been convicted of raping a 16-year-old girl and of gouging out her eyes with his knife. He is a suspect in three other murders. His own family has said publicly they are terrified that he will be released and will then kill them, as he has threatened to do. In other words, Joe Spaziano is not the kind of man whom any rational person would assume to be innocent, no matter what technical problems there were in his trial. The sole grounds for the passionate belief in Spaziano’s innocence is that a witness who testified that Spaziano showed him two bodies where the murder victim’s body was found has, 20 years later, suddenly claimed that he lied at the trial. When this occurred, Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles ordered the state police to conduct an investigation. They did so and found ample evidence that the witness is lying now but told the truth at the trial. There is no corroboration of the witness’s claim that he lied at the trial and is now telling the truth. Even after 20 years to think about it, Spaziano cannot supply an alibi. The witness is now unable to get his new story straight. But there is corroboration of his original testimony. Spaziano’s brother and one of his former Outlaw gang members have both testified that Spaziano volunteered to them that he had killed two women in Florida and was worried about “a kid” who knew about the murder. “The kid” of course is the witness who now claims 20 years later that he made up the whole story and never saw any bodies. When this witness’s sister asked her brother why he ha changed his story after so long, she testified that he replied, “I’m tired of being harassed by Spaziano’s people, lawyers and the media.” The logical inference to be made from that testimony is that while lawyers have played games in the courts, fighting off one execution date after another, somebody has been trying to persuade a man to change his testimony. I hope that the trial judge will have the courage to base his decision on the testimony and not on the hysteria of the Herald or the wild rhetoric of Spaziano’s lawyers. You can be sure if Spaziano ever returns to society, he will kill again. When he does, those who helped him defeat justice, will also have blood on their hands. But either way, this sorry spectacle of justice delayed is why an increasing number of Americans looks upon the criminal justice system with contempt and disdain. It also shows how ideology attempts to subvert democracy. Any judge who opposes the death penalty should resign or at least recuse himself from all capital cases. For a judge to thwart justice simply because he disagrees with a democratically arrived at decision is disgraceful. And others who oppose the death penalty should take their debate to the legislature – and not try to sabotage justice. What a foul system it is that ignores the innocent dead and squanders millions on the living killers. Charley Reese is an Orlando Sentinel columnist. Editor’s note: On Monday, a judge granted a new trial for Spaziano. [image – photo of Charley Reese] [image caption – Charley Reese] Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Ramirez-Portillo, Jessica Student Editor of the Digital Item Dickinson, Terra Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Murder Case Demonstrates Sabotage of Justice Description An account of the resource With renewed interest in giving convicted murderer Joe Spaziano a new trial. Mello expresses the lack of legitimacy on this movement and specifically addresses the witness who claimed that he lied on the trial 20 years after the case. Mello closes his writing by impugning the idea of setting Spaziano free and how people in protest of death row may potentially deny justice to Spaziano's victims. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mello, Michael Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1999-01-24 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 JPG 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Subject The topic of the resource Criminal courts--United States Spaziano, Joe Equality before the law--United States Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Mello, Micheal. "Murder Case Demonstrates Sabotage of Justice, Public Contempt Justified in Spaziano Delay." The Tribune, January 24, 1996, A7. "Crazy Joe" Spaziano criminal justice death penalty Florida Judicial proceedings https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/3f112562bfb8e8c33439c9ca7bdc7060.jpg 2b3c8096bdbdde6240a6a018f6a3ebbe https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/b8ad860aee948e44060b6eac5d2a23d1.jpg bece773b9f1852144c2f1ad43e5e248f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [Title] In Hunter Case, Blame is Widespread [Author] by Michael Mello I teach legal ethics at Vermont Law School, and not infrequently I offer Mr. Hunter's practice to my students as an example of how it is possible for a person to be both a good lawyer and a good person. Now that Mr. Hunter faces disbarment I will use his case to illustrate a point about law and power: that if you take on the hard cases and the un-popular clients, the establishment will come after you. Clarence Darrow was indicted for jury tampering; William Kunstler was held in contempt in Chicago. In weighing Will Hunter's fitness to practice law in Vermont, it is important to remember that, in representing poor people and unpopular causes, Mr. Hunter was not only acting as a good person and a good citizen, he was acting as a good and ethical lawyer. In living the bar's directive to serve the community and its injunction never to turn away a client because the client is unpopular, Mr. Hunter was acting in the finest and most noble traditions of the legal profession in America. "Obey the little laws and break the great ones. That's the preamble to their Constitution." Andre Lorde wrote. Mr. Hunter got it backwards, but that, I think, is to his credit. I have never met Will Hunter, but I have met some of his former clients. The voices of the indigent people for whom Mr. Hunter was the "lawyer of last resort" have been conspicuously absent from the public conversation about whether Mr. Hunter is fit to continue practicing law. Mr. Hunter's principal sin seems to have been overcommitment, an inability to say "no" to those in need of legal aid. But it seems to me that the very legal establishment that seeks to banish Hunter from its midst is partially responsible for the reality that no lawyer other than Will Hunter would accept these people as clients. The bar ought to be asking why Will Hunter has been the lawyer of last resort for so many indigent people in need of legal aid. Where were the Vermont lawyers? Where, indeed, were his prosecutor and judges? And just when government is getting out of the business of providing legal aid for poor people, many private firms are becoming less and less willing or able to take on pro bono work. Now that paying clients are becoming harder to find, private practitioners are becoming less likely to work for free. A few years ago, John Dooley and Alan Housman wrote that proposed budget cuts to the Legal Services Corp. would "not meet the legal needs of poor people; in fact they would deny poor people the full range of legal services available to those who can afford an attorney." Those words were published 13 years ago. The funding cuts feared by Dooley and Housman are now reality. Mr. Hunter is not perfect- he's not a perfect lawyer, and he's not a perfect human being. None of us is- including Mr. Hunter's prosecutor and his judges. Give me an unlimited budget and the power to compel disclosure, and I'll find enough evidence to convince a gung-ho prosecutor that my target has acted "unethically." The ethical rules are by nature vague, and anyway complex human behavior doesn't lend itself to pigeonholing by codification. Look hard enough into any lawyer's practice, and you'll find at least some arguable improprieties. At a time when legal services for the poor are being crippled by funding cuts, we need the few Will Hunters among us- we need them now more than ever. And it is fair to ask his prosecutor and his judges: With Will Hunter banished from the bar, who will do the important work he has been doing for such a long time? Will Mr. Hunter's prosecutor fulfill that role? Will his judges? Will the regular members of the Vermont bar? Will Hunter performed an honorable role within the Vermont legal establishment. He took on the cases other attorneys wouldn't. Those other attorneys wouldn't say these poor people don't deserve any lawyer; they deserve some other lawyer. For years, Will Hunter was that "other" lawyer. So, if Will Hunter is disbarred, those most in need of legal help- and least able to pay for it- will lose one tireless, brilliant, quirky advocate. He will be missed by his community and his clients, and [end page one] [start page two] that's not a claim many attorneys can make. Will Hunter has already paid a high price for taking seriously the bar's injunction to represent the poor and the unpopular. His home was ransacked by federal agents. His name and his reputation have been tarnished by the commissars of ethics. Now those same commissars want to disbar him. Disbarring Mr. Hunter would be a "tragedy," as his prosecutor reportedly said. It would be a tragedy, but not for Mr. Hunter alone. It would be a tragedy for those in need of legal aid who will now have no lawyer at all. Most of all, it seems to me, disbarring Mr. Hunter would be a tragic and demeaning act for the Vermont bar. The bar should be better than this. The people of Vermont deserve better than this. Every year I look for role models for my ethics students; good people who do good work as lawyers. My hope always is that perhaps a few of those students will work for those among us who need legal aid but can't afford to buy it. Then the Will Hunters of the world might be able to say "no" once in a while- knowing that the client turned away will be able to find another lawyer. In the meantime I'll send all such clients to Vermont's Professional Conduct Board. Michael Mello of White River Junction is a professor of law at the Vermont Law School. [end page two] Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Johnston, Spencer Student Editor of the Digital Item Dickinson, Terra Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource In Hunter Case, Blame Is Widespread Description An account of the resource Michael Mello comments on the disbarment of fellow lawyer Will Hunter and the implications for the future of the legal profession in Vermont. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mello, Michael Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Mello, Michael. "In Hunter Case, Blame is Widespread." Rutland Daily Herald, July 23, 1996, p.1. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-07-23 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 JPGs 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Subject The topic of the resource Legal reform Disbarment of lawyers Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Royalton, VT https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/419ea3700efda77917359ad5cecdd88c.jpg f82c30582539aac8b42be663cbd6830c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [heading] The Lawyer’s Bookshelf [subheading] Reviewed by Ursula Bentele [handwritten text] New York Law Journal (8/9/96) [title] Against the Death Penalty: The Relentless Dissents of Justices Brennan and Marshall [author] By Michael Mello. [publishing information] Northeastern University Press, Boston, Mass. 331 pages. $45. [article start] Against the Death Penalty by Michael Mellow addresses a fascinating topic in its most compelling context. The question of what is the appropriate reaction of a judge to what he or she perceives to be an unjust law has plagued philosophers and jurists for centuries. When that law can result, as it now can even in New York, in putting a human being to death, the issue takes on additional urgency and drama. [end paragraph] [start paragraph] In a recent program at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York discussing this topic, speakers disagreed sharply about the “right” response of a judge, opposed to capital punishment, who is faced with the prospect of participating in a criminal justice system that carries out executions. On the trial level, might the judge be duty-bound to volunteer for capital cases, so as to ensure that the defendant will secure the most favorable possible rulings and instructions, or should the judge request that such cases not be assigned to her? Should the judge on an appellate court use all his persuasive powers to reduce the number of death sentences affirmed, while dissenting in all cases in which the majority disagrees, or, at some point, must the judge resign as a matter of conscience? [end paragraph] [start paragraph] Justice Robert Utter, a highly respected member of the Washington Supreme Court who had dissented in every case in which a death sentence was affirmed, finally resigned last year, announcing that “I can no longer participate in a legal system that intentionally takes human life in capital punishment cases.” He said his decision was prompted in part by similarities he observed in his own moral struggles with those reported in Ingo Muller’s Hitler’s Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich. [end paragraph] [start paragraph] Whether this analogy, or similar ones referring to the judges who upheld the apartheid laws in South Africa, is entirely appropriate to the situation of anti-death penalty judges operating within the American system of justice may be debated. Nonetheless, a book with the title Michael Mello gave to his book would, I had hoped, discuss in some considerable depth and from a wide perspective the different responses to cases in which current law and personal morality conflict. While the book does not touch on some of these issues, to my disappointment it does so only briefly and in a limited fashion. [end paragraph] [start paragraph] Like Michael Mello, I have represented scores of death row inmates. As counsel for those facing execution, I always appreciated the presence of Justices William J. Brennan and Thurgood Marshall on the U.S. Supreme Court in these cases, not simply for their inevitable votes against death, but for their eloquent voices in dissent. Yet at times a sense of disquiet tugged at my subconsciousness. Would I be so sure that they were acting appropriately if I happened to disagree with their position? [end paragraph] [start paragraph] Indeed, when Justice Antonin Scalia announced his intention no longer to follow the precedents, set by the Court in Woodson v. North Carolina and Lockett v. Ohio, requiring individualized consideration of all defendants charged with capital crimes, didn’t I think (as I would imagine Mr. Mello thought) that Justice Scalia acted improperly? After all, “relentless dissents” on both sides amount to stubborn refusal to abide by the well-established precedents of the highest court in the land. (Justice Scalia might even have the better of the positions, as he claimed that it was logically impossible for him to follow the Woodson-Lockett line of cases while at the same time remaining true to the Court’s insistence in other cases that the death penalty must be applied in a consistent, evenhanded fashion.) [end paragraph] [start paragraph] Mr. Mello’s book does present considerable background information relevant to the two Justices’ persistent voices against the death penalty. He begins with biographies of the two men, emphasizing particularly Justice Marshall’s long and passionate efforts on behalf of black Americans. He then chronicles the evolving practices of the Supreme Court in rendering its opinions, from Justice John Marshall’s focus on achieving unanimity whenever possible so as to enhance the Court’s credibility as an institution, through the “companions in dissent,” Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis D. Brandeis, to the modern era in which individual voices predominate over concern for the Court as an entity. [end paragraph] [start paragraph] Mello describes some of the most famous dissents in the Court’s history: Justice Benjamin Curtis dissenting from Dred Scott v. Sandford, the first Justice John Marshall Harlan delivering the lone dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson and dissenting along with Holmes and Brandeis from the Court’s decision in Lochner v. New York, the Holmes and Brandeis dissents from the Court’s incursions on the First Amendment, and similar dissents by Justices Hugo L. Black and William O. Douglas. From these examples, where once dissenting opinions ultimately persuaded the Court that its initial decision was wrong, Mello draws the conclusion that dissents have indeed been justified by history. [end paragraph] [start paragraph] Mello then surveys how various jurisprudential theories would deal with sustained dissents. Mello acknowledges that this discussion is only preliminary and limited in scope, but it does provide a basic framework for looking at the issue. At the extremes, the legal positivists would disapprove of such dissents as examples of failure to abide by the rule of law, while modern adherents to natural law would see Brennan and Marshall as abiding by a higher law, a position particularly justified when it serves to guarantee individual rights. The book does not explore what theoretical foundation actually might have influenced the Justices in their death penalty dissents beyond noting Justice Brennan’s partiality to modern natural law theory. Readers may find interesting Mello’s perception about how individual thinkers, including Herbert Wechsler, John Hart Ely and Jesse Choper, would assess these relentless dissents. [end paragraph] [start paragraph] The final chapter in the book is titled “Legitimacy in Judicial Politics.” Here Mello, with the assistance of the recently released papers of Justice Marshall, provides several instances of opinions starting as dissents that either persuaded a majority or, in the form of dissents from denial of certiorari, signaled to counsel issues that might in the future command the four votes necessary to obtain review. This section fives the reader an interesting flimpse into the workings of Marshall’s chambers, as well as demonstrating that, at least in some cases, these dissenting views not only spared some lives but affected the course of capital pubishment jurisprudence. [end paragraph] [start paragraph] Given the book’s important contribution, I consider it unfortunate that it includes gratuitous ad hominem attacks on Supreme Court Justices that are neither fully developed nor adequately supported. True, one would not expect a book dealing with the dissents of Brennan and Marshall to contain extensive critical assessments of the other members of the Court. It would therefore only have been improved, at least in this reviewer’s eyes, had it omitted such throwaway lines as “a cynical hack like Lewis Powell,” as well as a personalized diatribe against Clarence Thomas, “whose dismal performance as a Justice so far has already more than fulfilled by lowest and basest expectations . . . [who] does his speaking through groups of people plucked from the Rolodex of his best friend and through the brutal character of his judicial opinions . . ..” [end paragraph] [start paragraph] Perhaps my assessment of this book was unduly colored by my own high expectations. The question of what honorable men and women should do when faced with laws that they regard as supremely unjust is timely and of the utmost importance. Mr. Mello has performed a valuable service in gathering a lot of material relevant to this critical and difficult issue. In light of his outstanding advocacy on behalf of capital defendants, he was well qualified to analyze why the particular relentless dissents of Justices Brennan and Marshall – dissents that essentially said “not in our names” when the state was determined to put one of its citizens to death – were different from other sustained dissents. By shortchanging this issue, Mr. Mello missed a valuable opportunity, at a time when no member of the Supreme Court adheres to this position, to provide thoughtful support for judges categorically opposed to the use of capital punishment in our country. [article end] [reviewer information] Ursula Bentele is a professor at Brooklyn Law School. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Book Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Berrier, Carson Student Editor of the Digital Item Dickinson, Terra Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Against the Death Penalty: The Relentless Dissents of Justices Brennan and Marshall Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mello, Michael Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-08-09 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Subject The topic of the resource Legal reform Capital punishment Supreme Court Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 JPG 300 DPI Description An account of the resource Review of Mello's piece discusses what the appropriate reaction of a judge should be to a law they believe to be unjust (specifically concerning capital punishment). Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bentele, Ursula. Review of "Against the Death Penalty: The Relentless Dissents of Justices Brennan and Marshall," by Michael Mello. New York Law Journal (August 1996). Language A language of the resource English https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/a2c19ebbb9ba88e745d5122bd87cdaed.jpg bfb4cca87d6c6d36146c646680c6f530 https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/f025d79984f89ab402c08e8e04663b5c.jpg ead1f27007b1782b2a6f157ed471da2e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 5 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [heading] Hunter Indictment Is Phony [subheading] Commentary [author] Michael Mello [start of article] About a half century ago, a federal judge remarked that a prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich if the prosecutor wanted to. What the judge meant was that prosecutors exercise virtually total control over their grand juries: Prosecutors decided, unilaterally and in secret, what evidence their grand jurors will hear. The citizen who is the target of a grand jury probe is excluded from the process, if the prosecutor so decides: Neither the citizen/target nor his attorney has a right to cross-examine the prosecutor's witnesses, to present their own witnesses, or even to be present in the room. [next paragraph] Unfortunately, grand juries don't indict ham sandwiches. They indict American citizens. They indict whomever their prosecutors tell them to indict. [next paragraph] Recently, two different grand juries, hundreds of miles apart, indicted two very different men I call friends. In Florida, state prosecutors reindicted "Crazy Joe" Spaziano for the 1973 capital murder of Laura Lynn Harberts. Since 1976 -- when Jimmy Carter was beginning his single term as America's president -- Joe Spaziano has lived on Florida's death row for killing Ms. Harberts. During his 21 years on death row, he survived five death warrants. During that 21 years Joe Spaziano strongly proclaimed -- and as his lawyer for 14 of t hose years, I attempted to prove -- his innocence. Finally in 1996, after the state's only real witness against Spaziano in 1976 had recanted his trial testimony, the Florida courts ordered a retrial. Now that their case against Joe had disintegrated, the local prosecutors could and should have let the case drop. Instead, they persuaded a grand jury to re-indict Spaziano. "Crazy Joe" Spaziano: ham sandwich No. 1. [next paragraph] Ham sandwhich No. 2 is closer to home. Last week a federal grand jury in Vermont indicted Will Hunter. After a 1995 late-night raid on, and search of, Hunters home/office, and more than two years of investigation of Hunter for "laundering" drug money, the federal prosecutors persuaded their grand jury to indict Hunter for 10 counts of mail fraud (I have to wonder whether our federal prosecutors got this idea from the Tom Cruise character in "The Firm"). For good measure, they also threw in a count of bankruptcy fraud. [next paragraph] I know Joe Spaziano is innocent; and I expect Will Hunter is innocent as well. (Since I don't know the factual record of the Hunter case, I [separate quote] 'It take a courageous prosecutor to decide not to indict a citizen who has been the target of a public investigation.' [paragraph continues] must remain agnostic on this score.) But perhaps the more troubling common thread connecting the two cases is this: In both cases, I believe, the government abdicated their moral, ethical and legal responsibility not to indict citizens who have been the targets of intensive (and expensive: your tax dollars at work -- hundreds of thousands of your tax dollars, so far) prosecutorial scrutiny. Drive-by preconceived assumptions of guilt ("If they weren't guilty, we wouldn't have made them targets in the first place"), bureaucratic inertia, and institutional and political pressures to justify the tremendous amounts of time and energy and tax money already invested in the investigation, prosecutors might feel that they must come up with something. [next paragraph] What they came up with, in my view, is a lot of legalistic smog. Nowhere in their "24-page indictment" of Hunter do our federal prosecutors say that Hunter stole clients' money for personal gain. The government's fantasy of Hunter's "elaborate scheme to defraud" is nothing more than an artifice create by the government's clever manipulation of accounting principles. [next paragraph] Sure, Hunter made mistakes during his long and honorable career as a lawyer in Vermont. He's admitted that. Some of his mistakes were stupid ones. He's admitted that, too. [next paragraph] But any lawyer as busy and successful as Hunter will make mistakes. Give me two full years; give me hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to hire a staff; get a judge to authorize my law enforcement agents to stage a midnight raid on my target's home/law office; and I'll guarantee you I'll find at least 11 "irregularities" in the financial dealings of any lawyer in this state. [next paragraph] And the lawyers in this state should know it. perhaps that explains their otherwise inexplicable -- except perhaps for simple cowardice -- failure to stand with Will Hunter and against his persecution, first, by the fools who run Vermont's Professional Conduct Board, and, now, by our federal government. There certainly are lawyers in Vermont who lie to their clients, who steal money from their clients, who sexually harass their clients. There certainly are criminals hiding behind licenses to practice law in Vermont. But Will Hunter ain't one. [page break] [article continues] One mark of maturity and growth is to admit to one's mistakes and to make amends to those who were harmed by those mistakes. Will Hunter has learned that. Sadly, our federal government has not. [next paragraph] Like the rest of us mere mortals, government officials -- and that's exactly what prosecutors are -- hate to admit they were wrong. And they hate to look foolish. After all, reputations and careers are at stake (theirs, I mean). Remember Richard Jewell? [next paragraph] Even if Hunter's prosecutors lose at the subsequent criminal trial, they can always blame the jury (or the judge or the "liberal" Vermont Supreme Court or the clever defense lawyer) for letting a criminal go free. His -- the prosecutor's, I mean -- professional reputation need not suffer thereby. Of course, his target's reputation is annihilated. Again, remember Richard Jewell? [next paragraph] So now there will be the trials: Joe Spaziano's for his life, and Will Hunter's for his liberty and good name. This means yet more tax money spent -- unless the prosecutors can persuade their targets to accept a plea "bargain." [next paragraph] Already, rumors are swirling around Florida that the local prosecutors intend to offer "Crazy Joe" Spaziano a deal: He pleads guilty, in exchange for a life sentence, rather than the death penalty. If such a deal is offered, I'm note sure how I would advise my friend and former client -- my innocent friend and former client. Should I tell him to lie -- to confess to a murder he and I know he didn't commit -- in exchange for what's left of his life? After 21 years on death row, and five death warrants, I couldn't quarrel if he decided to take the prosecutor's "deal." [next paragraph] Similarly, I don't know what I'd tell my friend Will Hunter in the event his prosecutors offered him a "deal": In exchange for his pleading guilty to some minor infraction (regardless of whether he's in fact guilty of it), Hunter and his family are able to avoid the expense, humiliation and stress of a criminal trial in federal court. Imagine yourself in Hunter's shoes. What would you do? [next paragraph] These are the sorts of games some prosecutors play. It take a courageous prosecutor to decide not to indict a citizen who has been the target of a public investigation. Not long ago, Windsor County prosecutor Patricia Zimmerman took some political heat for just this reason. The heat was unjustified: She was just doing her job. And her job is to do justice, not to rack up as many prosecutions as possible. [next paragraph] The federal prosecutors in Vermont could learn a lot from Pat Zimmerman. [end] Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Trick, Lukas Student Editor of the Digital Item Dickinson, Terra Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hunter Indictment Is Phony Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mello, Michael Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-07-17 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Language A language of the resource English Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment Law reform Description An account of the resource An article written by Michael Mello arguing for reform in the justice system claiming that the government abdicates its moral and ethical responsibility not to indict citizens being scrutinized by prosecutors. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 JPGs 300 DPI Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Mello, Michael. "Hunter Indictment is Phony," Rutland Daily Herald (Rutland, VT), July 17, 1997 https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/cde32f925e100df75a79b269cf75b97a.jpg 1e8c32ae6106f889d7f67ad38b5d8abe Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 5 Text Text Any textual data included in the document Valley News Sunday, August 10, 1997 Good Choices, Bad Process To the Editor: Your July 31 article “Dean’s Court Comments Draw Fire” might have had the unintended effect of leaving some readers with the mistaken impression that I oppose the governor’s two recent appointees to the Vermont Supreme Court. To the contrary, Gov. Dean, notwithstanding his naked attempts to stamp the court with his own ideological biases, made two superb picks for the court. To paraphrase Gov. Dean, my beef isn’t with the people he placed on the court. My beef is with the governor who put ‘em there. Specifically, my beef is with the governor’s use of an ideological litmus test – his questioning potential judicial nominees about how they would have decided particular constitutional law cases, the results of which Dean disagrees with – which is especially offensive to the basic idea that judges are supposed to approach each case with an open mind. And, in spite of Gov. Dean’s attempts to pack the Vermont Supreme Court with his ideological soul mates, my prediction is that both of Dean’s picks so far will be refreshingly free of ideological predispositions. Both have professional histories of fierce independence, thoughtfulness and courage. In light of Gov. Dean’s thuddingly predictable attacks on the independence of the Vermont judiciary, this last quality – courage – might in the long run become the most important. A final prediction: In 10 years, Gov. Dean will be as disenchanted with his Supreme Court picks as he is peeved at the present court. Supreme Court justices have a history of disappointing their executive patrons. President Eisenhower, for instance, called his appointment of William Brennan – perhaps the greatest jurist of this century, who was laid to rest just recently – the “biggest mistake” of his presidency. A decade from now, if anyone is still listening to Howard Dean’s ignorant broadsides on the Vermont judiciary, he will be griping about the decisions his appointees reach in individual cases. MICHAEL MELLO Professor of Law Vermont Law School Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Jones, Margaret Student Editor of the Digital Item Van Doren, Jamie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Good Choices, Bad Process Subject The topic of the resource Vermont Supreme Court Description An account of the resource An opinion piece about the selection of justices for the Vermont Supreme Court in 1997. Mello describes why he thinks the governor was flawed in his process of choosing the justices for the Supreme Court. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mello, Michael Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Mello, Michael. "Good Choices, Bad Process." Valley News (Lebanon NH), August 10, 1997. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-08-10 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 JPG 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Vermont https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/40ce3eb3256067ebb65da440b045937c.jpg bf91999fa1882a1cc0775a0cda672cc1 https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/8d8fb0b1318b875d83da8c4d53037581.jpg fc7092ff771acc03f5901b2e734b39dd https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/151f4fa524f65b298f23afd480d2d395.jpg 8d61e1ab0218d27b37bd6da14bd92e85 https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/8ffa7f2a90dec68d76660720cd3936c5.jpg 8305637d6c9c03a44965dfd8e948be11 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 5 Text Text Any textual data included in the document September 28, 1997 Sunday Valley News Death Penalty Foes Have Been Dormant By SARAH STROHMEYER Valley News Staff Writer LEBANON — For decades, foes of capital punishment have rested comfortably in New Hampshire knowing that the state’s last execution took place 58 years ago and that the likelihood of another one in their lifetimes seemed distant. But the alarm went off last month when Gordon Perry, 22, allegedly discharged his .38 caliber Taurus into the side of Epson Officer Jeremy Charron as he checked Perry’s car early on Aug. 24. Charron, who had just returned from serving as a pallbearer at the funeral of a New Hampshire trooper killed in a gun battle in the North Country, died on the way to the hospital. There have been other murders recently that might have met the narrow criteria for capital punishment in the Granite State, but for one reason or another the attorney general has not sought that penalty. That is not the situation with Perry’s case, which has been described by legal experts as solidly within the parameters of a capital crime. This time, the New Hampshire Attorney General has pledged to seek Perry’s execution. And now, death penalty foes are rushing to organize a movement to prevent that and other future executions — even though they already may be too late. “Basically it will take us a long time to gear up an organized effort,” said Arnold Alpert, New Hampshire Program Coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee. “In states like Texas and Florida, where executions have been taking place, (opponents) are organized about it. Or in states like Pennsylvania, where there is no death penalty, they have an active movement. But we’re in sort of this intermediate place.” One of the state’s more vocal opponents of capital punishment is Mark Larsen, a Lebanon lawyer, an unsuccessful candidate for Grafton County Attorney, and perhaps a future leader of the state’s anti-death penalty movement. Larsen said he decided to speak up months ago, following Gov. Jeanne Shaheen’s announcement during her campaign last fall that she intended to expand the death penalty statute to apply to those who murder during the commission of other specific felonies, especially when children are the victims. As a start, Larsen sent the governor a book on the death penalty written by former California governor E.G. “Pat" Brown. Last spring, Shaheen renewed her campaign pledge when a bill was introduced to the state legislature advocating the death penalty for people who murder children or crime witnesses. Now that Perry has been charged with a capital crime, the issue has taken on even greater intensity, Larsen said. “Certainly, with the Charron killing, this has got to ring into focus the question of the death penalty,” said Larsen. “I certainly intend to join with like-minded people to, number one, try to convince the governor that she doesn’t want to go down that path. My plan is to join with others. See Death — Page A6 [Bold Enlarged Quotation] “I certainly intend to join with like-minded people to … try to convince the governor that she doesn’t want to go down that path.” Mark Larsen Lawyer Continued from page A1 This is not the way we want to go, morally or ethically.” He and other observers have noted a striking convergence of factors over several years that contribute to the sense of urgency. They include changes in New Hampshire law that bring the state’s capital punishment statute in line with U.S. Supreme Court rulings, thereby making it tough to challenge in court; and a switch from hanging to lethal injection as the preferred method of execution, with the intent of making executions more politically palatable. Those changes took place after the state reinstituted capital punishment in 1977. And they seem to have caught death penalty opponents off guard. “In New Hampshire, the movement to reinstate capital punishment has been very methodical and without … public discussion,” said David Lamarre-Vincent, executive secretary of the New Hampshire Council of Churches. “I recall House and Senate hearings on incremental steps, and there was little press coverage and public interest.” The Rev. John McHugh, director of Aquinas House at the Catholic Student Center at Dartmouth College, testified in legislative hearings about the death penalty when it was reinstated in the ’77. He said he still is opposed to it, as is the Catholic Church, but does not have immediate plans to speak against it again. “I wasn’t aware that there was an imminent need,” he said. McHugh’s perception is not uncommon. Sarah Putnam is a Quaker, secretary of the local Society of Friends and an opponent of the death penalty. More recently, though, she had been immersed in other causes, such as protesting the launching of a satellite that will carry nuclear material into outer space. “As soon as the governor came into office, we wrote her a letter of support stating again our stand against capital punishment,” said Putnam, referring to her local Society of Friends. “But that was it. We haven’t been real active on this issue recently. … I wasn’t aware that there was even this momentum” about the death penalty. Lamarre-Vincent said a sense of urgency has been missing over the past decade or more in part because it has looked like New Hampshire’s narrowly defined capital punishment statute might never be imposed. He said he knows there is support for his organization’s anti-death-penalty stance because the council of churches got a heavy response to a pamphlet on the death penalty published just about the time of the Charron Shooting. “It’s a coincidence,” Lamarre-Vincent said. His group had begun work on the publication two years ago after it noticed a “gradual move toward an acceptance of the death penalty” in New Hampshire. Now the council or churches is trying to assemble a task force of theologians, lawyers and business people who are opposed to the death penalty; Lamarre-Vincent said he is searching for people willing to speak out. He said Larsen is one of the few he’s found so far who does not mind sticking his neck out. “What we want to do is create a forum for a renewed public discussion of this issue,” he said. “We want to begin to put together, hopefully, a task force. … I have been trying to find people willing to speak out on the issue. I just haven’t seen a lot of other people speaking out publicly.” New Hampshire has never been a hang-’em-high state. For the first 100 years of its settlement, no execution took place even though neighbors in Massachusetts seemed to be crazy for the public entertainment, at times hanging up to 16 people in one day. Sarah Simpson and Penelope Kenney, teenage girls, were hauled through the streets of Portsmouth on Dec. 27, 1739, and hanged in such a way that they died by slow strangulation. They had been convicted of drowning a child whose body was never found. The last execution took place on July 14, 1939, in the state prison in Concord. Howard Long was hanged for “a sexual slaying” in Laconia, according to a state librarian. In between, there was the 1796 hanging of Thomas Powers (some records use the name Palmer) in Haverhill for a murder committed in Lebanon. Since 1939, three people have spent time on death row. One man was sentenced to death in June 1949, but he committed suicide the following year. The other two were Rhode Island men who had killed a manufacturer in Nashua, but they were never hanged because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972. That Supreme Court ruling, in Furman vs. Georgia, also left a door open for the reinstatement of capital punishment by each state. Many states then rewrote their statues to address the high court’s concerns that the death penalty was too often targeting minorities and the indigent. Today 39 states have death penalty statutes. Debate about capital punishment in New Hampshire resumed in 1985, when then Attorney General Steven Merrill proposed changing the method of execution from hanging to lethal injection. At the time, Mississippi was the only other state that hanged its prisoners. Two years later, Gov. John Sununu signed the lethal injection bill into law. In 1990, the law was tinkered with again, and it is that revised version that is on the books now. To impose the death penalty, the state must have a case that falls into one of five specific categories: the killing of an on-duty law enforcement officer, the killing of someone during a kidnapping; the hiring of another person to kill, killing after being sentenced to life in prison without parole, and killing while committing or attempting to commit aggravated felonious sexual assault. That New Hampshire has not expanded its capital punishment statute to include “felony murders” — murders committed during other felony crimes — makes it a tougher law to challenge on a constitutional basis, according to Vermont Law School professor Mike Mello, a nationally recognized expert on the death penalty — and an opponent of it. “The states that have crafted narrow death penalty statutes have survived” constitutional challenges, he said, noting that New Hampshire modeled its statute after laws adopted in other states that had already passed “constitutional muster.” In New Hampshire, a jury must find unanimously, after a special sentencing hearing, that the murderer purposely killed the victim or victims, or purposely engaged in behavior that resulted in death. If the jury does that, then it must find that eight aggravating factors outweigh 10 mitigating factors in order to impose the death penalty. That vote must be unanimous, too. In the case of Perry, who already had a serious criminal record when Charron was killed, the key aggravating factor might be that he was trying to avoid or prevent a lawful arrest. And that is what may make the Perry case an urgent one for death penalty foes. “We’re following this case pretty closely in my capital punishment seminar,” said Mello. “Absolutely, this is the case I have been dreading would come along in New Hampshire.” Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Vol. No./Issue No. Volume and issue number for the newspaper (if available) Vol. 46, issue 112 Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Curran, Ruth Student Editor of the Digital Item Van Doren, Jamie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Death Penalty Foes Have Been Dormant Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mello, Michael Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Strohmeyer, Sarah. “Death Penalty Foes Have Been Dormant.” Sunday Valley News, September 28, 1997. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-08-28 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 3 JPGs 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Lebanon, NH Description An account of the resource The case of Gordon Perry is examined. It is considered by Michael Mello to be a case highly important to those opposing the death penalty in New Hampshire. https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/e9021f88e5ec813d91c14567cfe96004.jpg 3028072efa66d57d5560ecacf1a7dd31 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 5 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [Title] Death not easy punishment for murder [Author] Michael Mello [Newspaper opinion section title] It’s My Turn Eight winters ago, a man I loved as a father was murdered. A few days before Christmas 1989, a racist coward with a grudge mailed a shoebox-sized bomb to federal appellate Judge Robert S. Vance. The bomb, which detonated in the kitchen of Judge Vance’s home on the outskirts of Birmingham, killed him instantly and almost killed his wife, Helen. I mention this story because it is an awkward time to oppose capital punishment in New England. The unfathomable lust murder of Jeffrey Curley in Cambridge, Mass., and the senseless slaughter of New Hampshire state trooper Jeremy Charron cry out for swift and severe punishment. This is as it should be; especially heinous crimes deserve an especially severe response by criminal law. Reasonable minds can conclude — as 38 American states have concluded — that capital punishment should exist as an option. Gov. Howard Dean — our homegrown Doctor Death — recently had an epiphany about capital punishment: He now supports it. He also seems to have decided to seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2000. With the razor thin 81-79 vote in the Massachusetts House last week, following only 12 hours of debate, it seems that restoration of capital punishment in Massachusetts is all but inevitable. But before Massachusetts decides irrevocably to become America’s 39th capital punishment state, and Vermont to become the 40th, its leaders ought to pause to study and consider the experiences of its predecessor states. Those experiences have not been happy ones. New York, for instance, has had the death penalty for two years — without a single capital trial but with a multimillion dollar capital defense office. Or take California, which has had capital punishment for more than 20 years and now has the nation’s largest death row — more than 400, but only two executions; when, in 1986, the California electorate decided that the state Supreme Court was too soft on capital punishment, the people tossed three justices out of office — and yet, still, only two California executions have occurred in the intervening years. Or Texas, where death rides an assembly line. Or consider Florida, the state that has, perhaps more than any other, strived — and paid with millions and millions of tax dollars — to make capital punishment fair as well as swift, and the state where I worked full time as capital appellate public defender in 1983-1987. Today, all executions in Florida are on hold following the fiery botched electrocution of Pedro Medina earlier this year. Why, you might ask, does not Florida simply replace its three-legged, solid oak electric chair — built in 1923 by prison inmates — with lethal injection? It’s not that simple. Lethal injections can, and frequently are, botched. This is so because the Hippocratic Oath precludes doctors and other highly trained medical personnel from participating in executions; and this means Florida’s medical lobby opposes lethal injection as a method of execution. In fact, no mechanism of execution is close to foolproof because it just isn’t easy to devise a way of killing an otherwise healthy human being that is quick, painless and not horrible for the state-selected witnesses to watch. It turns out that Florida has no easy or simple answer to its problem about how to carry out executions. This illustrates an essential fact about capital punishment: Nothing about it is as easy or simple as it first appears. Not even the choice of execution method. And that choice is only the beginning. These questions, and scores like them, are the real death penalty. The 38 states with capital punishment know this. Enacting a capital punishment statute is the easy part. The hard part is making capital punishment as a legal system work. That is hard and complicated and frustrating and very, very, very expensive. I oppose capital punishment as it exists — and as it will continue to exist for the foreseeable future, regardless of what the politicians tell you — as a legal system in America today. America’s modern experience with capital punishment has taught that it is a rigged lottery, skewed by matters of politics, class, race, geography and, most important, the quality of the defense lawyer at trial. The death penalty is not reserved for the worst murderers with the worst layers at trial. And innocent people will — inevitably — be sentenced to death and executed. It’s as inevitable as the law of averages and the fallibility of an infinite punishment administered by finite human beings and institutions. Judge Robert Vance loathed the death penalty as racist and pointless and degrading and deforming of the law he cherished. But, as a federal appellate judge, he often was constrained to uphold death sentences; when I was his law clerk, the judge and I argued, sometimes bitterly, about death cases. He always won these arguments; he was, after all, the judge. His assassin now lives on Alabama’s death row and, when he is executed, a small part of me will cheer, God forgive me. But another part of me, where Judge Vance still lives, will die again. Nothing about the real capital punishment is easy. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Felipe, Teresa Student Editor of the Digital Item Van Doren, Jamie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Death Not Easy Punishment for Murder Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment Description An account of the resource After the murder of federal appellate Judge Robert S. Vance, Mello discusses the opinions on the death penalty held in states such as Florida, California, New York, and Texas. Mello further examines the complications of the death penalty including the question of its legality, the difficulty of carrying out the sentences, as well as the huge expense these penalties cause. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mello, Michael Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Mello, Michael. "Death Not Easy Punishment for Murder." Burlington (VT) The Burlington Free Press, November 23, 1997. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-11-23 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 JPG 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Burlington, VT capital punishment death penalty Michael Mello