6 20 256 https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/ecb3e4206a206ec6691686041f5d5c6d.jpg 93d57f16684fb90860baed8db58fb00d https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/a7048b74d1a27cea2070b3dae4c4be5e.jpg af89533815566d073a7e373eef47ab19 https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/5768f5b9a65e75714244615ea798d467.jpg 6c66fe2d2cf8b763a271ab81d086ea2e https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/4e0c8af954f45da279ca1a311223dc95.jpg 99b513973fdaf033be0fd504624c4727 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 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) 37/209 Text Any textual data included in the document Serial killer Ted Bundy learned late on the night before his execution last month that the U.S. Supreme Court had denied his last-minute appeal for a stay of execution. The phone message came from the Barnard home of Michael Mello, an assistant professor of law at Vermont Law School. Mello, a nationally recognized specialist in death-row cases, advised Bundy's lead counsel during a frantic effort to save the murderer's life in the days leading up to his execution. Mello has been either one of the main lawyers or advised other lawyers or advised other lawyers on some 125 capital punishment cases. He is arguing two death-row cases this month before a federal appeals court in Atlanta. He had been advising Bundy's attorneys in a peripheral manner for several years until the Friday before Bundy's death on Jan. 24. Then he became centrally involved. Mello never met Bundy. He did, however, pass messages to him. On the Sunday before Bundy's death, for example, the serial killer asked Mello through a paralegal what he should do about his confessions. Bundy had been meeting with detectives from four states and had so far told them he had murdered 23 young women since the mid-1970s. Mello's message to Bundy: "Shut the (expletive) up." Bundy's wife later told Mello that when she heard the message it was one of the few times she smiled during the final week of her husband's life. An interview with Mello in his law school office last week provided a glimpse into the 11th-hour legal maneuverings to stop Bundy's execution and into the world of death row. Mello's views on capital punishment have appeared everywhere from "The New York Times" to the "Washington Post" to "The Wall Street Journal". He also has appeared on the television program "Nightline". His attitude on the death penalty can be easily summed up: He absolutely and totally opposes it. Mello said that Bundy's question to him about confessions two days before he was electrocuted put him in a quandary. "On the one hand, if he wanted to make it right with God and confess, who am I to say, "Don't". And as a citizen I liked the fact that the confessions were closing investigations and giving the families a sense of closure, too, so they could move on with their lives. "On the other hand, I was also convinced that his confessions were devastating to his legal case, and were absolutely sabotaging his defense. They were offensive because it looked like he was trading on the bodies of his victims to save his own life. "That's what did it," he said, "Judges are human." Bundy would likely be alive today if it wasn't for those confessions, Mello believes. Regarding his blunt advice to Bundy that Sunday, he said: "I thought the time had passed for subtlety and sugar-coating. When you're passing messages to people of questionable mental capacity, you have to be clear and direct." Mello, who teaches criminal law and criminal procedure at Vermont Law School, first became involved in death-row cases while a law clerk with a federal appeals court judge in Birmingham, Ala., after graduating from law school. "I became my judge's 'death clerk.' I did all the death penalty cases that came through the office. That's where I became aware and then outraged about what was going on, particularly in Florida." What was going on, Mello says, was that there were minors on death row, along with mentally retarded and mentally ill people. These people are not just legally mentally incompetent, he said, "but crazy the way my mother thinks of as crazy - people who talk to spaceships." "I learned that there were a lot of innocent people on death row, and just in general that the legal system that decides who dies is lousy. It's class-based and racist. I learned that most people on death row are there because they had bad lawyers." There are nearly 2,200 people on death row nationwide. Florida alone has about 320 death-row inmates. And so Mello turned down an offer to work in the corporate law department at the prestigious national law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore and headed to Florida. His first job was as an assistant public defender representing death-row inmates. Then in the fall of 1985 the Florida Legislature created a state agency to represent all indigent inmates on Florida's death-row. The idea, Mello says bitterly, "was if we give them lawyers we can kill them faster." It had just the opposite effect, however. Mello, who joined the agency at its outset, said the agency attorneys "shot down executions left and right." When he started work for the state. Mello immediately encountered the Bundy case, but the agency decided to farm it out to a private law firm from another state. Among other reasons, the five lawyers were already tremendously overburdened, representing 150 death-row inmates. "You could have three lawyers working full-time on Bundy with an unlimited budget and still not do the complexity of that case and that man justice," Mello said. The Bundy case, which actually was two cases proceeding on two different appellate track in different courts, was taken over by the Washington law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. (Llyod Cutler was chief counsel for President Jimmy Carter.) Mello then left the Florida state agency to work as a litigation attorney to work as a litigation attorney for Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. Meanwhile, James Coleman, one of Wilmer's partners and an acquaintance of Mello's, had become Bundy's lead counsel. When Florida Gov. Bob Martinez signed a death warrant for Bundy on Jan. 17, scheduling his death by electric chair seven days later, Coleman headed down to Florida to get appeals started, and he and Mello began a series of telephone discussions. "On the Friday evening before the execution, Jim and I were on the phone together and he had the trail transcript in front of him, and we saw an issue that had gotten stays in half a dozen cases before Bundy, and, as it happened, two after him. "In the course of the conversation we realized for the first time that Bundy's case had this critical issue in it - an issue I had helped to develop in other Florida cases." Bundy had received death sentences for murdering 12-year-old Kimberly Leach in Florida 11 years ago and for the killings of two Florida State University sorority sisters just three weeks before that. The critical issue was this: In the Leach trial the jury had been told "that sentencing isn't on your shoulders - it's merely a recommendation - when in fact, a recommendation of life carries great weight in Florida," Mello said. Though a jury only advises a judge in capital cases on what it thinks is a proper sentence, the U.S. it is not on their shoulders, and so it goes to the judge. He then refers back to the jury - therefore neither judge nor jury has that awesome responsibility of deciding if an individual deserves to die. It's a very human emotion to not want to take on that responsibility. "This isn't a legal technicality. This is a real big deal. This is exactly why so many people end up on death row who shouldn't be. And why so many stays are granted on this very issue." Mello, working out of his office at the law school, dictated a short statement of the issue to be put in federal court papers that would be filed the next morning, which was a Saturday. The court papers filed that morning challenged the constitutionality of the death sentence. At noon the federal District Court denied the petition, and at 6 p.m. the federal Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta unanimously affirmed the District Court's denial. "I was thunderstruck that we were in and out of the Court of Appeals already," Mello said. On Sunday he and Coleman went through the Leach trial transcript and realized how powerful the issue was, stronger than those that had gotten stays in a half a dozen cases up until then. They gathered all the relevant information together and on Monday, the day before the scheduled execution, Coleman filed an application for a stay of execution at the U.S. Supreme Court. He also filed applications for stays at the trial court and the Florida Supreme Court. "On Monday we waited and waited. The day got later. The state court litigation wasn't concluded until 6 p.m., and we immediately took it up to the U.S. Supreme Court." Coleman and another lawyer went to the prison where Bundy was being held to visit with him for what might have been the last time. Mello was left to deal with the Supreme Court - which he did by telephone from his home in Barnard. It mainly involved checking in periodically that night to see if the justices had reached a decision and when the decision would be released. "While I was waiting for the court, I took a couple of calls from people who told me about the increasing the line and came back and told me we had lost by one vote. Five to four. And the four were on the issue that we had not identified until that Friday." Mello called the prison so Bundy could be told of the decision - and then he poured himself "a nice stiff glass of Wild Turkey." Mello, who was not paid for working on the Bundy case, asked how he felt when he heard of the court's decision. "Sick. Flattened. Guilty, because I hadn't identified the issue earlier. Real angry that somebody was going to be executed for what were mistakes by his lawyers." Mello says he goes back and forth on that way of thinking. "This has not been a great day," he said earlier last week. "So today I blame myself." He said he doesn't blame Coleman. If not the death penalty for a man like Bundy, who was a suspect in as many as 36 sex murders across the country, then what? What do you do with the Ted Bundys of the world, Mello was asked. Life imprisonment? "Yeah, life in prison. Incarceration," Mello said. "The important thing is to keep them away from us as long as they're still dangerous. "The question is: What do we get out of killing the Ted Bundys? What we got was a spectacle that should make all civilized people pause. What happened outside that prison made people cringe all over the world." The unfairness of how the death penalty is applied is so overwhelming, Mello said, that he has never had to confront the moral issue it presents. "But if push comes to shove, I'd probably have to say that I am opposed" on moral grounds. Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Conger, Jeffrey Notes Additional information regarding your item. This content will not be viewable in the Public View. Features one picture of Michael Mello. 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 Professor worked on final Bundy appeals Description An account of the resource Michael Mello gave advice to Ted Bundy and his legal counsel. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Heil, Andrea Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Valley News 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 1989-02-13 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 4 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 Connecticut Subject The topic of the resource Bundy, Ted Capital punishment 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. Bob Martinez Coleman Death Row execution Florida Michael Mello Ted Bundy U.S. Supreme Court https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/836a05af9d889ad3cda1e094096d3b6c.jpg 50b772d92effeeb86a669ec505d05bf9 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 Your article on attorneys representing death row inmates ("The Last Defense" by John Greenya in the November/December 1987 issue) is typical of the sentiment of our liberal legal establishment. The nine-page article makes no mention of the agony endured by survivors of murdered family or friends, nor, in the specific cases cited, to the evidence that persuaded the jurors to convict. But why should trivial considerations like murder victims and prosecutorial evidence be dis- cussed in an article seeking to convince its readers that the real victims are the con-demned murderers themselves. Attorney Mello, in gleefully explaining how he saved one Steve Booker from the electric chair, neglected to share with the readers just why Mr. Booker is on death row. Presumably, he wasn't condemned for jaywalking. Although not familiar with the Booker case, I do know something about the murder committed by Mello's late client, Ronnie Straight. Consequently, I found Mello's talk of Straight's "altruism" to be rather puzzling. Straight was con-victed of the beating and stabbing death of a furniture store owner who had declined to hire him. Hardly the deed of an altruist. Mr. Mello proudly states that he was a pallbearer at Straight's funeral after Straight's execution. I would wager that in his zeal to save Straight, he forgot about a sympathy card for the store owner's family. David Kendall's assertion that "the system is skewed against" death penalty lawyers is absurd. Last summer the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Booth v. Mary-land (No. 86-5020), that a man convicted of capital murder in the stabbing deaths of an elderly Baltimore couple could introduce any and all witnesses of his choice to testify on his behalf as to why he should not be sentenced to death. However, the victims' surviving family members could neither ut-ter nor write one word about how the murders affected them. I agree with Mr. Kendall—the system is skewed, but certain-ly not against condemned killers. John Booth's death sentence was overturned. The plethora of mitigating factors con-sidered at a capital sentencing, coupled with federal decisions like Booth v. Maryland, demonstrates that the system is skewed in favor of death row inmates. Finally, two points concerning the author's research. He writes that the District of Columbia has the death penalty. This is absolutely false. Washington, D.C., does not have the death penalty and hasn't had it for a long time. The author also refers to the Washington Post as "generally pro-death." The Washington Post is on record, and has been for as long as I can remember, as being totally opposed to capital punishment in all cases. 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 Letters: Death penalty law Subject The topic of the resource Mello, Michael Description An account of the resource A letter to the editor of The Washington Lawyer in response to an article titled "The Last Defense" by John Greenya which critiqued the stance of the article in relation to criminal justice, specifically referring death penalty cases. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Wallace, Scott M. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Washington Lawyer 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. Language A language of the resource English Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource January/February 1988 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 JPG Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1987-1988 https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/d0cebe52e1aa7c657c1440831af060f7.jpg 63075d7e9c466603b4da75e4d5ff3f42 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 Miguel Richardson bears little resemblance to the securities brokers and corporate raiders that Steven Rosenfeld, a partner in Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison has always represented. Mr. Richardson, convicted of the murders of two Holiday Inn security guars in San Antonio, has been on death row in Texas since 1982. "From the point of view of a typical corporate attorney this is an entirely different clientele," Mr. Rosenfeld said. "This sort of population is not the most popular in society and there is certain reservation about doing this sort of work in the minds of a lot of people. But it's hard to pick a group of people who needs help more but have less access to it." To an uncommon extent, many of the nation's most prestigious corporate law firms are volunteering for duty in a difficult area of criminal: capital punishment. Some, like Paul, Weiss, have represented death row inmates before but are doing so more often. Many others, especially in the South and West are taking on such cases for the first time. Represented All the Way The movement is a response to an acute shortage of criminal lawyers for capital appeals. While the defendants have a constitutional right to legal representation at trial and through at least one appeal, there is no constitutional right to a lawyer through the long process of appealing a death sentence all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Many states have mechanisms to provide representation for death row appeals, but there are not enough defense lawyers to go around, according to prosecutors, prisoner rights organizations and many judges. The entry of leading, corporate law firms into death row appeals has brought complaints from some prosecutors who are annoyed by the delays and long legal briefs that the civil litigators have brought to this criminal matter. But the influx of sharp new minds is also welcomed in the Have taken capital cases since last October. While most of the participating corporate lawyers have little or no experience in the field, experts say training and resources and often the sheer love of challenge, more than compensates. Yale Kamisar, a leading constitutional scholar at the University of Michigan law school, said inexperience in death penalty appeals could even be an advantage in opening the way to novel approaches. "People in private law firms coming insights experienced criminal lawyers would not," Professor Kamisar said. "A civil lawyer who takes a capital case is more likely to get fired up and think of every conceivable argument he can make." 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 Big firms offer death row defense Subject The topic of the resource Death Row Defense Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived New York Times 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 July 8, 1988 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 JPG 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 Michigan Description An account of the resource Big law firms offer lawyers to defend people on death row https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/e6569123c9d6ae959df8c19a53c878f4.jpg a7d828c725c2ffd5de6022449efc3c67 https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/8004526b1d6c81f08f712bb3ef0c928f.jpg 3b4a81450b5ba81ae80b710f8efc04cb 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 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper article Vol. No./Issue No. Volume and issue number for the newspaper (if available) Vol. 27 Issue No. 117 Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Hall, Jennafer Text Any textual data included in the document [[Image]] Death Row inmate Paul Edward Magill: ‘I’ve been here for 11 years almost and more people have gotten off Death Row than have been executed – many more.’ [[end page]] Since Paul Edward Magill was sentenced to death in 1977, his lawyers have been trying to prevent him from becoming the first person in 34 years to be executed in Florida for a crime committed while a juvenile. The Florida Supreme Court twice reviewed his case, once in 1980 and again 1983. Both times Magill, who committed first-degree murder when he was 17, came out the loser. By the time he was 26, the governor had signed two death warrants against Magill, who was convicted of robbing, kidnapping, raping and murdering a store clerk in Marion County. His lawyers, however, haven’t let up, inundating appellate courts with an avalanche of briefs and pleadings in an effort to keep him out of Florida’s electric chair. Two weeks ago, they succeeded. On May 5, a Marion county jury overturned Magill’s death sentence and recommended life. The following day, the judge, William T Swingert, approved the recommendation and signed an order sentencing Magill to life, which carries a mandatory 25-year minimum term in Florida. According to one of his attorneys, Michael A. Mello, an assistant professor at Vermont Law School, who along with Clearwater lawyer Patrick D. Doherty defended Magill, he could be eligible for parole in 13 years, having already served 12 years in prison. Magill’s age at the time of the killing played no part in his life sentence. Although the U.S. Supreme Court in November heard a case, William Wayne Thompson v. State of Oklahoma, on the constitutionality of executing juveniles convicted of capital crimes, it has yet to rule. Sentencing ‘prejudice’ Instead, Magill’s resentencing was prompted by a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the 11th Circuit. In 1987, the federal appeals court held that Magill’s sentencing proceeding was prejudiced by his trial lawyer’s ineffectiveness during the penalty phase of the first trial and by the jury’s failure to consider mitigating circumstances. The 11th Circuit found that the jury in Magill’s first trial was limited to consideration of five factors enumerated in the Florida Statutes. But the U.S. Supreme Court concluded in a 1987 case, Hitchcock v. Dugger, that the Constitution precludes imposing the death penalty where “… the advisory jury was instructed not to consider, evidence of non-statutory circumstances.” The 11th Circuit, therefore, remanded the case for a new trial on Magill’s sentence. During the new sentencing phase, the defense put on Magill’s family, three psychologists and a criminologist. Magill also took the stand. This time, only four of the 12 jurors voted for the death penalty. To recommend death, seven of the 12 must vote for it. Mello says that the outcome proves that when a jury is allowed to hear all the factors that mitigate defendant’s criminal behavior, the result is significantly different. “It shows that Hitchcock error really matters. It’s not just a technicality. It’s the difference between life and death.” “The theme of the defense was that this was an impulsive act done by a kid,” Mello said. “But he was a screwed-up kid who was not only chronologically a minor, but in terms of emotions was much younger than this stage can be – and Paul entered adolescence emotionally impaired. A psychologist who testified at the trial and had examined him when he was 12, likened Paul to a car with defective brakes rolling down a hill. He said that at age 12 Paul was troubled and predicted that it would only be compounded when Paul entered adolescence.” Magill had been arrested twice for indecent exposure by the time he was 15, and for shoplifting at 16. He frequently ran away from home and, according to his mother’s testimony at the first trial, tried to slash his wrists when his father wouldn’t buy him a motorcycle. Mello said evidence that the jury previously had been precluded from acting upon made a difference. The jury was allowed to hear how remorseful Magill felt and heard evidence establishing that he acted impulsively. “When Paul was testifying at the first trial, his lawyer asked him about remorse,” Mello said. “The prosecutor objected that remorse wasn’t in the statute as a mitigating factor. The court sustained the objection and told the jury not to consider remorse because remorse wasn’t listed in the statute.” Mello noted that the first jury was allowed to hear evidence about his impulsive actions but they weren’t allowed to give it independent weight. “The problem was that the jury was instructed that they could only consider that kind of evidence insofar as that evidence was probative of the two statutory mental or emotional distress,” he said. “Eight out of 12 members of the jury bought the argument that he was distraught the argument that he was doing,” said John C. Moore, Ocala State attorney and one of the prosecutors in the case. “We were basically left with an old case. The defense spent a lot of time and money on the case. We don’t agree with the verdict, but we’ve got to live with it.” Last December, Magill told The Review that he didn’t expect to die. “I’ve been here for 11 years almost and more people have gotten off Death Row than have been executed – many more,” Magill said. “And that’s going to continue until eventually I think it’s going to be abolished.” He said he had come to understand himself better, but he didn’t understand why he had been on Death Row for so long. “There have been times when I’ve been in depressed moods wondering what’s taking so long. I’m really grateful for the opportunity because the time here has been a rebuilding process for me. It’s taught me a great deal and I think I needed to be forced to sit down and learn.” 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 Appeals ruling key to death sentence: Inmate leaves Death Row for life term Subject The topic of the resource Housen, Christine Magill, Paul E. Florida. Supreme Court. Mello, Michael A. 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. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Housen, Christine Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Broward Review Newspaper Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1988-05-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 JPG 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 Description An account of the resource Paul Edward Magill was sentenced to death for crimes he committed as a juvenile. He went through many trials with many appeals. He is now withstanding the last trial to determine his fate. Magill stated that more people had gotten off Death Row than had been executed and that he should be allowed life. Christine Housen Death Row Florida Supreme Court Michael A. Mello Paul Edward Magill The Broward Review https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/7f030f83ba04faaf213746b89f90d0e2.jpg 5c67be9d69f1c17bb7778bb69e9941fe 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/. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available History 298, University of Mary Washington Language A language of the resource English Title A name given to the resource Delays On Death Row: Booker Appeals Frustrate Lawyer https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/1a76b91ba8ade2d5e5e2390881be825b.jpg ec2c8f951ce45f3979ec6ac91cbc9ec7 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 Gainesville-In the office of First Assistant State Attorney Ken Herbert is a file called "The Lady and the Beast." The file sits with other papers and photographs in one drawer of a black, metal filing cabinet devoted to a murder committed almost 11 years ago. The "lady" was a 94-year-old Lorine Demoss Harman, a Gainesville widow. The "Beast" is a Stephen Todd Booker, now 35, a death row inmate at Florida State Prison. He is scheduled to be executed Sept. 20 for the murder, but has an appeal pending before federal district court in Tallahassee. Inmate Freddie Lee Hall is also scheduled to be electrocuted on that date. Herbert used "The Lady and the Beast" title to outline the tragic differences between Harman and Booker. On Nov. 9 1977, the 170-pound Booker raped, beat, stabbed and killed the 90-pound Harman in her apartment. Booker, a drifter, had broken into Harman's apartment and was ransacking it when Harman returned home. The differences extend even after Harman's death. Alone, Harman probably only had minutes to fight desperately for her life. With several lawyers, Booker has had years to fight for his life through an exhaustive series of appeals that continued this week. In his latest appeal, argued before federal district Judge Maurice Paul in Tallahassee on Monday, Booker's attorneys said his death sentence was unconstitutional because the jury wasn't allowed to consider some mitigating evidence such as Booker's history of psychological problems and drug addiction. Paul has yet to rule on the appeal, but one of Booker's attorneys said he expects Booker will survive his fourth death warrant and his death sentence will be overturned. Attorney Michael Mello, a professor at Vermont Law School, said the 1987 Supreme Court decision Hitchcock v. Dugger will work in Booker's favor. That decision, delivered by Justice Antonin Scalia for a unanimous court, overturned a death sentence for inmate James Hitchcock, who was convicted of murdering his step niece. The court ruled his death sentence was unconstitutional because some mitigating evidence, such as Hitchcock's family background, was not considered by the jury. Mello said the Booker jury was also limited in the mitigating evidence it could consider during the 1978 trial. For Herbert, who prosecuted the case, the 10 years of appeals represented an abuse of the judicial system. Booker already has appealed his death sentence unsuccessfully on several different issue in several different courtrooms. For Booker's attorney, the appeals are the only salvation for a system they say is flawed. In addition to Mello, Booker is represented by two attorneys based in Washington, D.C. "If the death penalty is a deterrent, then most people would argue it's got to follow soon after the crime, so a message is brought forth," said Herbert in a recent interview. "At this point, I don't know how many people in Gainesville remember this case." Herbert certainly does. Every time a death warrant has been signed for Booker and every time Booker has appealed, Herbert has been notified. His files on the crime are extensive, and throughout these papers, Herbert's anger with the viciousness of the crime is apparent. Harman was stabbed nine times in her chest and received four cuts in the struggle with Booker. He left two knives embedded in her body, one in her neck and one in her chest. Before her death, she was raped. Thus far, Booker's attorney have not questioned their client's guilt in the crime. The arguments have focused on whether the proceedings in court were constitutional. Mello disputed Herbert's contention that the appeals process is being abused. "It seems to me that the system is working precisely the way it should," Mello said. "What Ken Herbert is really saying is that Booker should have been executed earlier, even though signing his death warrant was unconstitutional. That strikes me as a misguided view." But so far, Booker and his attorneys have been unable to prove the unconstitutional claim. The Florida Supreme Court, along with various circuit courts and even the U.S. Supreme court, have refused to throw out Booker's three other death warrants. Booker has survived them because those warrants have expired during earlier appeals. Herbert said he is not opposed to Booker's right to appeal, but he said the judicial system is taking too long to reach a conclusion. Almost 11 years after Harman was stabbed to death, the fate of her killer is still undermined. "People have a right to some finality in their judgments," Herbert said. "There needs to be a better process." Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Serfis, Malin 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 Booker appeals frustrate lawyer Description An account of the resource A newspaper article about Todd Booker. Booker murdered a 94 year old woman and claimed that his death sentence was unconstitutional. Booker was helped by lawyers to push his death sentence. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Loughlin, Sean Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Gainesville Sun 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 1988-09-14 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 JPG Language A language of the resource English https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/dc13fe1e8db50c04db4756ccd50871ac.jpg 2076543b566d08a67007f78bb8e89c54 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 Tallahassee- The death sentence for Stephen Todd Booker, convicted of beating, raping, and fatally stabbing a 94- year- old Gainesville widow in 1977, was overturned Friday by a federal judge who said not all mitigating evidence was considered by the jury. The state of Florida immediately filed an appeal with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. Booker, 35, was four days away from execution when Judge Maurice Paul of the U.S. District Court in Tallahassee issued his opinion, vacating the death sentence and ordering a new sentencing hearing for him. Booker, an inmate at Florida State Prison in Starke, was on his fourth death warrant. This is the first time he has won a new hearing. The ruling has no effect on Booker’s murder conviction, only the sentencing. Earlier this week, one of Booker’s attorneys, Michael Mello, a professor at Vermont Law School, predicted that Paul would overturn the sentence based on a 1987 Supreme Court decision, Hitchcock v. Dugger, that stated all mitigating evidence must be heard by juries in capital cases. Booker’s attorneys argued that some mitigating evidence, such as his family background, mental instability and a history of alcohol and drug problems, were not considered by the jury. Judge Paul agreed. “What the court is saying is there was a Hitchcock violation,” said Carolyn Snurkowski, assistant attorney general for the state. Part of Paul’s opinion read: “This court is cautious about speculating on the effects of errors in capital sentencing proceedings, especially in light of the discretion given to the sentencer.” Snurkowski said the state will argue there is no need for a new sentencing hearing and Booker should be executed. “The argument is: Just because this error may have occurred,… it’s not such a fundamental error that would require a resentencing proceeding,” Snurkowski said. One of Booker’s attorneys said Booker would prevail despite the state’s appeal. “The state is going to do what the state is going to do,” said James Coleman, a Washington-based attorney. “(But) I think if anyone were to look at this thing objectively, I don’t think there’s any reason for a death sentence.” Coleman said Booker would probably receive a life sentence after a new sentencing hearing. “He’s never denied it,” Coleman said of the murder. “His defense has not been innocence. It’s been a question of whether the court should have sentenced him to death.” Booker killed Lorine Demoss Harman during a savage attack in her apartment, beating her, raping her, stabbing her nine times and leaving two knives plunged in her body. A jury convicted Booker of murder in 1978 and he was sentenced to die. Coleman described Booker as “remorseful” for his crime. Coleman said he spoke with Booker after learning of the decision. “He was surprised, but very happy,” Coleman said. Booker was surprised, Coleman said, because he has failed to win any of his earlier appeals. His first death warrant was signed in 1982. Another inmate also was scheduled for electrocution on Tuesday, but the Florida Supreme Court this week issued a stay for Freddie Lee Hall. 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. Staneart, Kellyn 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 Booker death sentence reversed: the state immediately appealed the ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment Description An account of the resource The death sentence of Stephen Todd Booker was overturned because the jury did not look at all mitigating evidence. Booker was before convicted of beating, raping, and stabbing a 94 year old woman. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Loughlin, Sean Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Gainesville Sun 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 1988-09-17 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. 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 Gainesville, FL Atlanta, GA appeals capital punishment Death sentence Florida Death Row Florida Supreme Court murder rape https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/8ce33990e5095ed89ed471ed05ba28ba.jpg a45dba2557d045bbcf8b7179e21fbe56 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 Killer Escapes Execution Again 11 Years After Execution Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource The Associated Press Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Palm Beach Post Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1988-09-19 Language A language of the resource English Subject The topic of the resource Escapes execution Description An account of the resource The 90-pound, 94 year old widow was raped, beaten and stabbed to death in minutes. Nearly eleven years later, her convicted assailant’s battle for life continues as his lawyers keep winning delays in court. 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 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Palm Beach, Fl 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 GAINESVILLE- the 90-pound, 94 year old widow was raped, beaten and stabbed to death in minutes. Nearly eleven years later, her convicted assailant’s battle for life continues as his lawyers keep winning delays in court. Stephen Todd Booker, now 35, appears likely to survive his fourth death warrant in the case. U.S. District Judge Maurice Paul on Friday stayed Booker's scheduled Tuesday execution. The state is appealing Paul's stay. On Nov. 9, 1977 Booker raped, beat and stabbed Lorine Demoss Harmon of Gainesville. Booker, a drifter, had broken into Harman's apartment and was ransacking it when she returned home. Booker left two knives embedded in her body, one in her neck and one in her chest. Booker's attorney said his sentence was unconstitutional because the jury wasn't allowed to consider some mitigating evidence such as Booker's history of psychological problems. For Assistant State Attorney Ken Herbert, who prosecuted the case, the 10 years of appeals represent an abuse of the system. "If the death penalty is a detergent, then most people would argue it's got to follow soon after the crime," Herbert said. "The system is working precisely the way it should," said Michael Mello, one of Booker's attorneys. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper 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 Killer escapes execution again 11 years after widow's murder Subject The topic of the resource Executions (Administrative law) Description An account of the resource The 90-pound, 94 year old widow was raped, beaten and stabbed to death in minutes. Nearly eleven years later, her convicted assailant’s battle for life continues as his lawyers keep winning delays in court. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource The Associated Press Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Palm Beach Post 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 1988-09-19 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 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 Palm Beach, FL https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/4eab6c645cd6562557edb557cec0fcb8.jpg c4cc5afef1c4f4fa079b7d14604157fe https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/68cfd85680009c501f08a4e3de977f05.jpg 9c537b12ad92e643dda3f0f047e6c503 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 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper article Vol. No./Issue No. Volume and issue number for the newspaper (if available) Vol. 113, No. 120 Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Sundberg, Eric Text Any textual data included in the document STARKE — Even though Florida already appoints lawyers to defend Death Row asking that the U.S. Supreme Court not make the practice mandatory. On Monday, the high court agreed to hear a Virginia case in which that states is appealing a federal circuit court ruling requiring the state to provide attorneys for indigent inmates on death row who are appealing their convictions. The case involves Joseph M. Giarratano, who was convicted and sentenced in 1979 for murdering a woman and raping and murdering her 15-year old daughter. His conviction and sentence were upheld by the Virginia Supreme Court in 1980. He is one of nearly 40 inmates on death row. A district judge ruled that Virginia was not giving inmates meaningful access to the courts and ordered the state to appoint personal lawyers for individual inmates, rather than have inmates rely on law libraries or on a small group of lawyers to represent a number of prisoners simultaneously. In the Florida case of Gideon vs. Wainwright, the high court recognized the right of the indigent to have legal representation supplied by the state at the trial level. So far, that right has not been extended to appeals. Defendant Clarence Earl Gideon was documented in a book written by Athony Lewis, a columnist for The New York Times. The book was the basis of a movie where the role of Gideon was played by Henry Fonda. Florida’s support of Virginia’s position is detailed in a 13-page brief the state’s attorney general filed with the Supreme Court last month. The state of Georgia filed a separate brief with the other states. In the amicus curiae — commonly called a “fiend of the court” brief — the state of Florida maintains death row inmates have no constitutional right to attorneys on appeals. The position has bewildered the director of the Office of Capital Collateral Representative, the Florida state agency that represents most of the state’s 290 death row inmates on appeals. Director Larry Spalding said there is an inconsistency with the states having such an agency and then questioning the state’s constitutional obligation to death row inmates. Of the states that filed briefs on Virginia’s behalf, Florida is the only one with an agency that provides attorneys to death row inmates on appeal. “The state of Florida does not have a unified position before the U.S. Supreme Court,” Spalding said. “I am giving serious consideration to CCR filing an amicus brief on behalf of Giarrantano in support of a constitutional right.” Asked why death row inmates should be entitled to attorneys on appeals when such a principles does not apply to other convicts, Spalding replied: “Because there’s a difference between sitting in jail and being put in an electric chair.” The state’s attorney general office disputed the notion of inconsistency or the suggestion that the brief is an effort to dismantle the agency. Gov. Bob Martinez has been an outspoken critic of the Office of Capital Collateral Representative, having called for several investigations of the office. A specially appointed commission recently found no evidence of unethical conduct, but a criminal investigation continues. Carolyn Snurkowski, an assistant attorney general for the state, said establishing a new constitutional right for inmates could complicate an appeals process that already takes years. Specifically, Snurkowski said, if death row inmates have a constitutional right to legal representation, they could then question the competency of their lawyers on further appeals. “Can they come back and challenge the assistance” is the question concerning the state, Snurkowski said. Mark Menser, another assistant attorney general, said the Supreme Court has never set such a right for death row inmates in federal courts. “It should be left up to the states,” Menser said. “The federal government can’t impose a duty on the states it doesn’t impose on itself.” Snurkowski would not speculate how the court’s ruling, which is not expected until next year, would affect the Florida agency. But the brief, written by Menser, contains one passage where the state worries about “the creation of new grounds for collateral attack (such as ineffective collateral counsel) or the creation of new ‘due process’ rights.” “Florida will have to give serious consideration to abandoning the project,” the brief read. Rep. Everett Kelly, D-Tavares, chairman of the House Committee on Corrections, Probation and Parole Committee, said if the Supreme Court rules against recognizing a constitutional right for inmates, the legislature would have to consider the future of the agency. “If we don’t have to do it, why do it?” Kelly said. “I’m just not sure I would require legal counsel for them (death row inmates), most especially if they’re able to afford lawyers.” Michael Mello, a professor at the Vermont Law School, has written about the availability of attorneys for death row inmates. “It’s desperate,” he said. “There are people less than two weeks away from being executed who don’t have attorneys. The crisis that led to the creation of CCR in Florida is a crisis being replicated throughout the country.” But Jon Peck, press secretary for the governor, said Florida’s response to the crisis in 1985 was voluntary — and that is the key. “There are times when you do something, but you don’t want it mandated,” Peck said. 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 State joins death row suit Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Loughlin, Sean Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Gainesville Sun 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 1988/11/3 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 JPG Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Gainesville, Florida. Description An account of the resource The article discusses Florida joining the lawsuit against the federal government to stop the federal government from mandating the appointment of lawyers to death row inmates for appeals. The article also accounts for the different opinions of state officials and agencies on the suit and fractured stance on the state's role in the suit. Subject The topic of the resource Death row Death row inmates Due process of law amicus curiae appeals Bob Martinez Carolyn Snurkowski Circuit court Constitutional court Death Row due process Earl Gideon Everett Kelly Federal Florida Gainesville Sun Giarratano Gideon vs. Wainwright Henry Fonda John Peck Larry Spalding Mark Menser Michael Mello State suit Supreme U.S. Virginia https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/03c551bb5b75ad8c73713d9d94a89dd1.jpg 5493d1f878d21519e97dd88f46f8b2bb https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/f9771f1da401b8c0b874a2dd2ad4eecf.jpg edc7037e3a4b45ba0903d2dbc40935a5 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 Even as Ted Bundy spent much of the weekend confessing to unsolved murders, lawyers trying to keep him from the electric chair grew more hopeful that they can win a last-minute stay of execution from the U.S. Supreme Court. The reason for their optimism: a new, yet-to-be-aired issue for appeal that centers on whether a judge said the right things to a jury almost a decade ago when Bundy was on trial for killing 12-year-old Kimberly Leach in Lake City. Bundy, who is schedules to be executed Tuesday for the murder of Miss Leach, reportedly confessed over the weekend to killing at least nine young women. Those confessions stopped for a time Sunday, however, as the appeal that will be submitted this morning to the U.S. Supreme Court took shape. Additionally, Bundy called off an interview with reporters scheduled for today at noon. The issue that has surfaced—somewhat technical in nature—has to do with whether the judge overseeing the Leach trial conveyed to jurors how important their opinion would be to him when he decided Bundy’s sentence. Though a jury only advises a judge in capital cases on what it thinks is a proper sentence, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that death sentences can be thrown out on appeal if jurors have been led to believe their role isn’t significant. In the Leach trial, says at least one of the lawyers trying to keep Bundy alive, that’s exactly what happened. Michael Mello, a Vermont law professor who has been offering advice to Bundy’s team of lawyers in Florida, said Sunday that a review of the trial transcript shows that Judge Wallace M. Jopling repeatedly told jurors they would be making a “recommendation only” on the question of life or death and that “the judge has the final say.” Because of such comments, Mello said, there has been a growing hope among Bundy’s lawyers that Bundy could get a stay. “I’m optimistic,” Mello said. “This claim is shaping into a very powerful claim.” Gary Printy, a Florida assistant attorney general who has worked on the Bundy case, said he didn’t think Bundy would get very far with the appeal. “I wouldn’t hold my breath for Ted,” he said. However, Mello pointed out that the court has stayed two executions in Florida because of questions similar to the ones Bundy will attempt to raise today. The background of the appeal is this: In 1985, in a case called Caldwell vs. Mississippi, the Supreme Court ruled that convicted murderer Bobby Caldwell, who had been sentenced to death, was entitled to a new sentencing hearing because the judge and prosecutor had told jurors their decision on life or death would be “automatically reviewable.” The danger of such comments, the Supreme Court said in its opinion, is that the jury could “minimize the importance of its role.” Elaborating, the court went on to say, “Even when a sentencing jury is unconvinced that death is the appropriate punishment, it might nevertheless wish to ‘send a message’ of extreme disapproval for the defendant’s acts. This desire might make the jury receptive to the prosecutor’s assurance that it can err (in recommending death) because the error can be corrected on appeal. A defendant might then be executed, although no sentence had ever determined that death was the appropriate sentence.” Since the court’s decision was issued in June 1985, several Florida death row inmates have received stays of execution on the basis of what are known as “Caldwell claims,” and one inmate whose claim failed has been executed. One of the inmates who got a stay, Aubrey Adams, was on his third death warrant when the Supreme Court stopped his execution about 12 hours before he was to die in 1986. Te court, which heard arguments in Adams’ case in November, is expected to decide soon whether jurors were adversely affected when the judge said to them: “The final decision as to what punishment shall be imposed rests solely upon the judge of this court.” “That’s what jurors were told in the Leach trial, and it is one reason Bundy’s lawyers are hopeful. As late as Friday afternoon, the lawyers were anything but hopeful. Some were already wrestling with the notion that Bundy likely would be executed. Over the weekend, Mello said, lawyers who undertook the task of reading a transcript of the Leach trial found instance after instance of what they interpret as improper statements to jurors from both the judge and prosecutors. In one instance, Mello said, a prosecutor asked the juror who would later be foreman, “Do you understand that the judge would have ultimate responsibility?” In another instance, Mello said, a juror asked if she would be deciding whether Bundy would be sentenced to death, and Jopling replied, “No, ma’am. The jury renders and advisory opinion…the judge has the final say so.” In a third instance, according to Mello, Jopling told jurors, “The law places the awesome burden on the judge to decide the final penalty.” “It’s the combination,” Mello said, explaining why such statements might be important nine years after the conclusion of the Leach trial. “It’s the totality of the contents.” Asked whether in light of Bundy’s reported confessions such an appeal was making a mockery of the legal system, Mello said no. “When (jurors) aren’t told about their role, there’s a greater likelihood the jury will come back and recommend death. That’s the constitutional evil. That’s what the Caldwell decision is all about,” Mello said. “You may not think it’s a big deal, but the U.S. Supreme Court in Caldwell said it’s a very big deal. “Maybe we’ll get blown out of the Supreme Court on this, but the Supreme Court knows the issue, and Bundy’s got the issue.” Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Article Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Wilson, Ian Scott 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 Last-minute strategy aims for Bundy stay Description An account of the resource Mello argues that there is a good case for a potential stay of execution for Bundy. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Finkel, David Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived St. Petersburg Times 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 1989-01-23 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 JPG 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 Subject The topic of the resource Serial murderers Supreme Court Bundy, Ted https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/58cf1ec9925b62d6faadecae8daa30bb.jpg 991d50f6138a32deca9e0bc13850dd66 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 Bundy is set to die at 7 a.m. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Morgan, Lucy, Nickens, Tim and Lavin, Chris Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 jpg Language A language of the resource English https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/a2b12937409139891d7b670554389ade.jpg 6bc0be2cbbffa9361b6d8ed5b84c586c 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 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. Scovell, Madison Text Any textual data included in the document Ted Bundy, one of the most hated men in America, prepared early this morning to die in Florida’s electric chair. Late Monday night, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 not to give Bundy a stay of execution’, frustrating lawyers who had tried every appeal they could think of in a variety of state and federal courts. “There’s no question he left a trail of horror, destroyed families,” Gov. Bob Martinez said earlier in the day. “For all that reason and more, he deserves that rendezvous tomorrow morning with the electric chair.” The execution is set for 7 a.m. “He does not want to die. He is going through a lot of agony tonight,” said James Dobson, a religious broadcaster who was one of the last people to visit Bundy. Death penalty opponents, who usually state protests against executions, were noticeable quiet this time, recognizing the particular enmity that Bundy’s name inspires. Dozens of reporters from across the country gathered in this prison town to mark the execution. Forty miles up the road, in the town where Bundy kidnapped and killed 12-year-old Kimberly Leach, many residents were waiting for Bundy’s time to run out. “Closure, that’s what we’re looking for,” said Melinda Moses, a teacher at Lake City Junior High School, where the little girl was abducted. “We want it over with, and yes, we want him dead.” Legal maneuvers The U.S. Supreme Court’s vote came at 10:30 p.m. “This is the end of the road,” said Michael Mello, a lawyer who has been helping in Bundy’s final defense. “We came one vote shy.” The decision capped a frantic day of legal maneuvers and counter moves. Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision, two Florida courts had turned Bundy down. The issue before them was the same one that the Supreme Court rejected: that the judge presiding in the Leach case had improperly instructed jurors before they recommended that Bundy be sentenced to death. Bundy’s attorneys also appeared to be trying one other tack: that the years on death row had made Bundy insane. Martinez prepared for that possibility by dispatching a a three-member psychiatric team to Florida State Prison to examine Bundy if the need arose. If Bundy’s attorneys did try to claim Bundy was insane, it would be up to Martinez to decide whether to stay the execution. That prospect seemed unlikely. “In the case of Ted Bundy, he had it coming,” Martinez said after the Supreme Court ruling. “We know of no reason why he should have any stay or clemency…. We have every intention of carrying out the death penalty.” Preparations One of the last people to meet with Bundy was James Dobson, president of a family-oriented Christian ministry in California. Dobson taped an interview with Bundy on Monday afternoon. Although he will not release the tapes until after the execution, Dobson disclosed some of the contents Monday night. Dobson said that Bundy admitted killing many young women and blamed pornography for his crimes. “It became an obsession with him,” Dobson said. While Bundy was a teen-ager, he sought pornography that was increasingly violent and explicit, said Dobson, who was a member of a federal commission on pornography. As he was nearing 20, Dobson continued, Bundy started thinking about killing women, and after a year or two started following through on his urges. “He expressed great regret and remorse for what he had done,” Dobson said. Bundy also was scheduled to meet a final time with his lawyers and friends John and Marsha Tanner. Tanner is Volusia County State Attorney and active in a prison ministry. Bundy had no special requests for his last meal so prison officials were planning to give him steak, eggs and hash browns. It was to be served at 4:30 in the morning, and Bundy was to get only a spoon, the sole utensil allowed prisoners who are awaiting execution. At 6 this morning prison officials were to shave Bundy’s head and right leg, for the electrical connections, and let him take a shower. He was to put on a shirt and dark trousers; the trousers match a coat that is retained for burial. Most of his personal possessions have been stored. After the execution, they will be turned over to someone Bundy had chosen. At the end of the Leach trial, Bundy married a longtime friend named Carol Boone. Later, she had a daughter, and Bundy was said to be the father. Now a resident of Washington, neither Ms. Boone nor the girl were in Florida as the execution drew near. Convicted of three murders in Florida, Bundy spent much of the last few days confessing that he killed many more women in western states. In all, Bundy now admits at least 20 murders, investigators said. “I think he was born to kill,” said Washington state investigator Robert Keppel as he left the prison Monday. “He was just totally consumed with murder all the time. He really didn’t have time to hold a job or go to school.” Keppel, who has followed the Bundy murders since 1974, says Bundy has confessed to more murders than had previously been attributed to him. He has admitted killing 11 young women in Washington, three more than investigators have included in the list of so-called “Ted murders,” said Keppel. One of the Seattle area murders took place in May 1973, a year before the other deaths that Seattle officials have long attributed to Bundy. “He could describe things in detail,” Keppel said. “It was almost like he was just there.” Bundy found a place to dump a body in Washington and kept returning again and again with new bodies, aware each time that the police had not found the others. Bundy’s mother, Louise, who lives in Tacoma, Wash., with his stepfather, John Bundy, said the confessions were unexpected “because we have staunchly believed - and I guess we still do until we hear what he really said - that he was not guilty of any of those crimes.” “But if this is true, if Ted did do these things, and if indeed he is substantiating it with facts that he really did those things… it’s the most devastating news of our lives… “I agonize for the parents of those girls,” she said. “We have girls of our own, who are very dear to us…. Oh, it’s so terrible. I just can’t understand.” Murder victim’s hometown In Lake City, Kimberly Leach’s hometown, people appeared tired – tired of the delays in the execution and tired of having been forced to relive the 12-year-old’s murder with the signing of each death warrant. “We’ve never forgotten,” said longtime Mayor Gerald Witt. “When he’s gone there’ll be a lot of people shaking hands, exchanging high-fives and all that because they finally killed the bastard.” Down the road from that mayor’s office, junior high school Principal Robert Simmons says that today’s students, who never knew Kimberly, have been educated in a school still “paranoid” about safety. Students still are organized into a buddy system. “If you see a student alone on this campus, teachers are angry,” Simmons said. Security officers patrol the grounds, and any time a student is absent, school officials call parents immediately to determine the student’s whereabouts. Parents, too, have kept up their guard, even some who did not live here when Kimberly died. “You hear about it enough,” said Candy Palmer, who stopped to pick up her seventh-grade son Danny Monday afternoon.” Most people are very attentive about getting here on time to pick up their kids. I know I am.” Across the road from the prison, television and newspaper reporters from around the nation gathered in a former cow pasture reserved for the news media at each execution. At the last execution, there were only a few reporters. Monday, there were more than 100. There were motors homes filled with electronic gear, and at least 14 satellite discs beamed the story to distant audiences. At one point Monday, the weight of 25 microphones taped to a makeshift lectern toppled the whole thing and sent television crews scrambling. Along the state road that runs past the prison, a Jacksonville man working out of his car sold shirts that featured a drawing of Bundy strapped to the electric chair and the slogan “Bundy’s Last Charge.” The shirts cost $10 each. And two entrepreneurs, who would identify themselves only as Randy and Rick, were selling electric-chair lapel pins for $3 apiece. 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 Bundy is set to die at 7 a.m. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Morgan, Lucy Nickens, Tim Lavin, Chris 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. Language A language of the resource English Subject The topic of the resource Bundy, Ted Death penalty Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived St. Petersburg Times Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1989-01-24 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 JPG 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 death penalty Ted Bundy https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/a996c376804e7aca5fe2b9b2c0906996.jpg cc014527cbe8a6547e9524496396e168 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 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 The faculty at Vermont Law School offers students a wide variety for legal study. Michael Mello, an Assistant Professor at VLS, brings both extensive research and work experience in the field of criminal law. Having graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law in May, 1982, Professor Mello clerked with the Honorable Robert S. Vance, United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Following this, Professor Mello worked as an Assistant Public Defender in the Office of the Public Defender, Fifteenth Judicial Circuit. His duties included all facets of capital litigation in state and federal courts in addition to being lead counsel in three capital cases and associate counsel in ten others. While working as Assistant Public Defender, Professor Mello represented death row inmates. His recent publication, “Facing Death Alone: The Post- Conviction Attorney Crisis on Death Row”, 37 American University Law Review 513 (1988), provides a definition of the counsel crisis in the post-conviction process of death row inmates and explores one state’s (Florida) legislative solution. The question of access to the courts in the post-conviction process is a complex one with which Professor Mello is continually involved. Florida’s death row population and the lack of counsel for the condemned became a crisis of epidemic proportions, especially in the mid-1980’s. Consequently, Florida experimented with a resource center known as the Office of the Capital Collateral Representative in Tallahasee, Florida. This agency had a statutory mandate to represent all indigent inmates on Florida’s death row. As Senior Assistant, Professor Mello was lead counsel in approximately 30 death row cases. His duties consisted primarily of crisis litigation in cases with imminent execution dates. Currently, Professor Mello teaches courses in criminal law and criminal procedure as well as a seminar on the death penalty and a section in the VLS General Practice Program on pretrial civil litigation. Professors Mello and Apel are also lead counsel in several capital cases including being principal drafters of the the Brief of Petitioner in High v. Zant, No. 87-5666 in the United States Supreme Court. Professor Mello is enthusiastic about his experience here at VLS and, with his extensive background and interests in criminal law, VLS students have invaluable resource from which to learn. In addition to his busy schedule, Professor Mello will be conducting a Facul-tea on Tuesday, March 14, 1989 at 3:30 p.m. at the South Royalton House. His talk will address the Ted Bundy case, of which Professor Mello is very familiar. All students and faculty are encouraged to attend this seminar. The seminar is a perfect opportunity for students to meet Michael Mello and learn about his interesting background and the many complexities facing our criminal justice system today. Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Emma Olson 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 Mello's expertise adds diversity Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Aspland, Tricia Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Forum 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 1989-02-17 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 jpg Language A language of the resource English Subject The topic of the resource Mello, Michael Vermont Law School Description An account of the resource This article discusses Mello's criminal justice resume, his fields of expertise and how he is beneficial as a professor at Vermont Law School. criminal justice law school lawyer Michael Mello https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/fb2205e480948187dcb3f09eb993d2cf.jpg 83fe8fb838baec6b2f1ff804b2c79299 https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/24ca71748c08ca8e36f61ab28d4d42f9.jpg e738201347503293f0160a2ea3366b72 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 Attorney General Bob Butterworth says the plan to eliminate some of Death Row inmates’ state appeals may not speed up the process. TALLAHASSEE – While agreeing with Gov. Bob Martinez’s view that appeals for Death Row inmates take too long, Attorney General Bob Butterworth expressed some skepticism Monday that Martinez’s plan to eliminate some state appeals would solve the problem. “We’re all in favor of speeding up the system,” Butterworth said. “But like I said, we’re reserving judgment (on the proposal). It could just back up one court, so it might not speed anything up. It could be a Catch-22 situation.” Martinez, a vocal critic of lengthy death-penalty litigation, last week proposed eliminating one series of appeals for condemned inmates, who average spending more than 9 1/2 years on Death row. Currently, inmates can appeal collateral issues through state circuit courts all the way to the Florida Supreme Court. Collateral appeals focus on such issues as the competency of an inmate to stand trial and whether the prosecution withheld any evidence from the defense. Those issues can also be argued through the federal court system. Saying there is too much duplication, Martinez wants to eliminate collateral appeals in state circuit courts, giving only the Florida Supreme Court a chance to hear such challenges before they enter the federal system. But Butterworth, whose office represents the state on death-penalty cases, said the problem with long appeals doesn’t really lie with the state. “The real issue is at the federal level,” Butterworth said. The state already has a two-year time limit in which a condemned inmate must raise all collateral (constitutional) challenges. There is no such time limit for the federal court system. Butterworth said he hoped Martinez succeeds in generating enough support for his plan, but he wasn’t optimistic that legislators would agree to completely eliminate one phase of the appeals process. In a separate move, U.S. Sen. Bob Graham has introduced a bill in Washington that would place a two-year time limit for collateral appeals in the federal courts, a move Butterworth says he supports. Graham has tried unsuccessfully in previous years to get that bill passed. Deputy Attorney General James York said he is frustrated more by federal courts that overturn or delay death sentences than state courts that review the legal challenges. While saying he appreciated the governor’s frustration with the current system, York said the proposal to eliminate some state appeals might result in the federal system “doing even more review” of death penalty cases. Defense attorneys for condemned inmates have lambasted all proposals to shorten the appeal. Several attorneys have said the maze of state and federal court hearings helps to prevent mistakes from being made before the state puts someone to death. Cutting out parts of that system may backfire for death penalty advocates, according to Michael Mello, a lawyer who once represented condemned inmates in Florida and is now a professor at the Vermont Law School. “Nothing’s going to get rid of executions faster than a string of executing innocent people,” Mello Said. But Peter Dunbar, general counsel for Martinez, said the issue is not having sufficient appeals, but having a duplication of appeals. Dunbar said the governor agreed with Butterworth that the reform is needed at the federal level, but Martinez can only address the state system. “How many times do you have to hear the same issues-until someone says, “We’ve heard it once, twice, three times, you’re out,” Dunbar said. “You don’t need to be duplicating your efforts.” 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. Rigmaiden, Erin 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 Cutting appeals 'could be Catch-22' Subject The topic of the resource Death row inmates Description An account of the resource Pan to eliminate state appeals for death row inmates may not speed up the legal process. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Loughlin, Sean Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Gainesville Sun 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 1987-03-07 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 JPG 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 appeals Death Row Florida Florida Death Row Supreme Court https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/faccc93022869c23233eed745c3d7802.jpg 48bb27a5326fd1f8cecd4dfa2bf425f0 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/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Colman McCarthy Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Washington Post Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1989/09/03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 jpgs 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 Mecklenburg, Virginia Title A name given to the resource The Debate Over Capital Punishment https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/bc012d0cb5719e817947ce60b80fde46.jpg f40963f646c132d639e91c35fde4fa10 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 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. Jaster, Matthew C. Text Any textual data included in the document When I visited Joseph Giarratano in early June in a state prison in Mecklenburg, Va., the sustaining life force in his death-row cell was a typewriter. It had the sacredness of a chalice, from which he drank of hope. Giarratano, convicted of killing two people, but whose guilt I and a fair number of others who have studied the records of the case see as open to grave doubt, is a gifted writer. He has produced articulate legal briefs on behalf of fellow prisoners, and his disciplined efforts are keeping with the view of Justice William Brennan: “Writing…is not an egotistical act. It is a duty. Saying ‘Listen to me, see it my way, change your mind’ is not self-indulgence-it is very hard work we cannot shirk.” Giarratano occasionally sends me some of his essays. Their quality matches his “The Pains of Life,” one of 16 essays in this valuable collection of perspectives that examines the effects of legalized killing on both the condemned and those involved in the judicial watch. Giarratano, along with C. Michael Lambrix, one of the more than 300 death-row prisoners in Florida, and Willie Darden Jr., who was executed in Florida on March 15th, 1987, are the three voices from within the walls. The outsiders, including attorneys, criminologists, historians, a philosopher, a journalist and a minister, tell of their personal involvement with the condemned or offer their assessments of what governmental homicide means at the time when death rows hold more than 2,200 people- a record- and are sent more than 200 citizens a year. Collectively, the authors are ones whom many Americans dismiss or ridicule for misplacing their sympathies with criminals, not victims, or for leading the soft-on-crime lobby. That image is as hollow as the disproven notion that capital punishment is a deterrent. The authors’ sympathies are with justice and compassion, neither of which has been on display when murderers kill or governments kill murderers. “As I see it (though others will disagree)” writes Watt Epsy, the Alabama historian who has documented some 15,780 legal executions, “no murderer is so heartless and cruel as the society that executes him. No individual murderer confines the victim to restricted quarters over a sustained period of time, or arranges things so that the person to die knows the manner in which death will come and the time at which it will arrive, hoping against hope for the magical reprieve, stay, or commutation that might prolong his life.” In his essays Giarratano, who is 32 and has lived 10 years on death row, writers of conversations with cellblock guards, “most of whom avoid the subject of my death, the possible deaths of the men around me, and their own role in this death ritual. There are a few who avoid my eyes and say “Joe, it’s not my doing. I don’t want to see you die. There are other people who deserve it more than you.’ Many find it easy to avoid the subject, since they will not be the ones who actually pull the switch- they will only escort me to the death house and let their co-workers take over.” Giarratano’s phrase, “this death ritual,” touches on what may be the only explanation for 70 percent of Americans-according to Gallup-favoring executions. In their essay, Elizabeth Purdum and J. Anthony Parades, anthropologists at Florida State University, compare the rituals of death in U.S prisons with the sacrificial killings of the Aztecs of Central Mexico in the 16th century. The Aztec’s believed that killing prisoners maintained universal order and the government’s well-being. Purdum and Parades argue persuasively that a similar view prevails today. A “groundswell of support for capital punishments in the United States,” they argue, “springs from the universal ancient human impulse to do something in times of stress, even if it is only ritual…In the face of all the evidence that capital punishment does no more to deter crime than the bloody rituals of Tenochtitlan did to keep the sun in the sky, we must seek some broader, noninstrumental function that the death penalty serves…Modern capital punishments is an institutionalized magical response to a perceived disorder in American life and in the world at large, an attempted magical solution that has an especial appeal to the beleaguered, white, God-fearing men and women of the working class. And in certain aspiring politicians they find their sacrificial priests.” Most of America’s state killings occur in the South. Nearly all of the executed have been poor, were victims of violence themselves and had pre-conviction lawyers who were inept. It is the judicial system’s rank unfairness that helped motivate Michael Mello to represent death row citizens. In his essay he recalls working for a man who was executed in May 1986 after the Supreme Court, five minutes before the electrocution, voted five to four to deny a stay: “I will never forget the waves of helpless rage that washed over me as the clerk of the Supreme Court read me the orders [of denial]. It would have been easy-too easy- to blame the Court as an institution…Instead I found that the real target of my rage was myself: a participant in the system of legal homicide…Was I serving to legitimate the system by helping to provide sanitized executions, executions with the aura of legalism and therefore the appearance of fairness?” In the months before Willie Darden was electrocuted in Florida, I encouraged a number of my students at the University of Maryland to write to him. He answered their letters faithfully, and no student failed to have new slants about capital punishment. Darden wrote to them much the same message he offers here: “We execute for the traits of the person found guilty. If the person is black, uneducated, poor, outspoken, slightly retarded, eccentric, or odd, he stands a much greater chance of being executed than do those convicted of even worse crimes than he. Juries find it hard to convict one of their own, so middle-class whites are rarely in our ranks…Most, if not all, of the humans on death row have souls that can be made clean through love, compassion, and spirituality. However, to acknowledge this threatens our ability to execute, as we must dehumanize before we can kill in such a predetermined fashion.” The only lack in this collection of essays is the thinking of a murder victim’s family. Marie Deans would have been ideal. She is a Richmond, Va., women whose mother-in-law was murdered by an escaped prisoner. Deans not only fought the death penalty in that case but regularly visits death rows for her Virginia Coalition on Jails and Prisons. Few are more enlightened on the madness of killing for punishment than Deans, and few have gone as far beyond the myth that executions bring solace to the victims’ families. A growing literature- from Robert Johnson’s Condemned to Die, to The Death Penalty in America by Hugo Adam Bedau- offers alternatives to thinking and acting violently about punishing murderers. This work stands with the best of what’s been written. It represents the best of those who have seen the worst. 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 The Debate Over Capital Punishment: Facing the Death Penalty Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McCarthy, Colman Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Washington Post 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 1989-09-03 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 Mecklenburg, VA Subject The topic of the resource Death row Executions (Administrative law) Giarratano Mello, Michael Description An account of the resource McCarthy anayzles the flaws of executions in death row. Talking with soon to be victim of exectuion, Giarrantano, among others, McCarthy lays out how complicated the legal use of executions are, and how many people think rather too quickly when favoring it ignorantly. https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/3be1d52e3e91ccb0bcc02b2df92666ec.jpg a1f3d6f00c2c3d191b5f7c407dcb3f83 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 Row Inmate Wants To Study Law Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Barlow, Rich Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Valley News Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 jpg Language A language of the resource English Description An account of the resource Convicted killer Joe Giarratano hopes to elude Virginia's electric chair and study law in Vermont. Subject The topic of the resource Death row, Vermont Law School Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Mary Washington Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Saturday, November 25, 1989 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource University of Mary Washington Libraries Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Vermont Law School 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 Law School 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 SOUTH ROYALTON- Convicted killer Joe Giarratano hopes to elude Virginia’s electric chair and study law in Vermont. That’s fine with Vermont Law School Assistant Professor Michael Mellow. Mello and others (pro-death-penalty columnist Jack Kilpatrick among them) doubt that Giarratano stabbed to death his two lovers- a mother and daughter- in 1979. Mello has invited Giarratano, a one-time suicidal drug addict who reformed himself into an accomplished amateur lawyer, to apply to Vermont Law if he’s sprung from death row. The University of Virginia wants him too. “Vermont’s where I want to go.” Giarratano, 32, said by phone from the Mecklenberg state prison, where he’s awaited death for 10 years. He probably can’t get into Vermont Law- he has no college degree, which the school requires- but the state permits anyone to study law under an attorney and take the bar exam. “That’s how Thomas Jefferson got his law degree,” Giarratano said. CBS, ABC and the Virginia media have investigated his case. MASH actor and activist Mike Farrell was to meet with him: even conservative Sen. Strom Thurmond has asked for a retrial, Giarratano said. “Amnesty International is sort of making his case the poster-child case for this issue,” said Mello. “It’s got all of the sort of star qualities that the media seems to be looking for. He’s bright, articulate, and most likely innocent, (got) terrible representation at trial.” Mello, a death-row lawyer who worked on mass murderer Ted Bundy’s case, met Giarratano last year, when both fought for the right of condemned inmates to have lawyers represent the in post-conviction appeals. The two briefly worked together on Murray vs. Giarratano, which challenged Virginia’s failure to provide lawyers; the U.S. Supreme Court turned Giarratano down but remanded the case to the lower courts. “His level of sophistication as a litigator is higher than most litigators I have known. His instincts are awesome,” said Mello. “He insisted on being treated…as lead counsel in that case. The discussions that I had with him about court strategy, court politics, which justices we needed to aim the beliefs at least equal, and frankly some of his judgements were better than mine.” Will he get out? “Politicians all across Virginia are calling for a retrial or a pardon,” said Giarratano. “I’ve had more hope now than I’ve had in a long time. Everything’s snowballing. He first confessed to the 1979 murders but has recanted. Kilpatrick writes why he doubts Giarratano’s a slasher: Giarratano was in a drug-and-booze haze the night of the killings and only remembers seeing the corpses in the apartment he shared with the women. His four written confessions-the only real evidence against him, Kilpatrick says-had discrepancies him, Kilpatrick says- had discrepancies, indicating police may have used leading questions to get them. New evidence shows a right-handed man stabbed the mother. Giarratano is a lefty with a nerve-damaged right hand. There were bloody footprints at the scene but no blood on Giarratano’s soles- just a spot on his shoe, which matched the daughter’s blood type, but was never matched with the mother’s. How’d he beat years of substance abuse to become headhunting material for law schools? “When I was arrested and wound up here in the prison on death row, all the drugs stopped, “he said. “Once all the drugs were out of my system, and (after) hundreds of hours of counseling…I just seemed to get my head screwed back on straight. “In order to keep my mind off doing myself in or forcing the guards to do me in, I struck my face in a law book,” He won a case to improve conditions at Mecklenberg- not for humanitarian reasons, he admits, but to flog the prison administration: “This was a way of getting back at the Man.” After further reading- legal books, The Federalist Papers- “the whole spirit behind that just really hit home,” and he plunged into the law. Some death-row inmates can articulate what it’s like to await the executioner, while others can understand complex legal issues, Mello said; Giarratano’s special because he can do both. Both men contributed essays to a recent book about the death penalty; Giarratano describes his final talk with a prisoner friend about to be executed: “As I lifted the phone to my ear and heard my friend’s voice, I didn’t know what to say. Other that quick hellos, our conversation consisted of a few scattered questions tied together with long silences. I could feel the tears leaking from my eyes as the hopelessness overwhelmed me. I wanted to tell Mike to fight the guards until the last second- to take some of them down with him- but all I could say was “I love you, my friend. I’m sorry I can’t stop this.” Mike’s reply still rings in my ear: I’ll be fine. Joe. You know that I’m going home. Please don’t do anything that you might regret later. You have to forgive them.” “Walking back to my cell, I could barely move- it felt as if every muscle in my body were cramped. I could hear the guards asking me questions, but I knew that if I responded, my hatred would spew out at them. I felt the helplessness and hopelessness in the pit of my stomach- I wanted to pull my friend back. It wasn’t until later that I noticed the blood on my wrists where the cuffs bit into my flesh. I tried to pull Mike back, and I couldn’t.” 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. Sartori, Joe 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 Death Row Inmate Wants to Study Law Subject The topic of the resource Death row Description An account of the resource Convicted killer Joe Giarratano hopes to elude Virginia's electric chair and study law in Vermont. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Barlow, Rich Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Valley News 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 1989-11-25 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 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Vermont Law School 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 Death Row Law https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/dd58500a4cefe17bd6b837d7d1f67877.jpg 53c1d419d1d3b8753f84d67090cd0a33 https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/28a0e0674c1c257942fb9dc17801ec66.jpg 3d3bebeeb17e2604d9ae8ce8ec0c97d5 https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/f8737b31c96cb5b444556daa8bb47263.jpg 2d846c42113ef56efd2119f9224fd0a0 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 BOYDTON, Va., Feb. 28 –Joseph Giarratano has spent most of the last 10 years in his cell in Mecklenburg Correctional Facility here, in the undeviating and claustrophobic universe of death row. But more than any of the nation’s 2,500 other condemned inmates, his name has traveled beyond the prison walls. It has resonated in the courts, where the 33-year-old Mr. Giarratano has fashioned novel legal arguments to broaden the constitutional rights of prisoners, notable, their right to counsel. In the tightly knit community of lawyers, scholars and opponents of capital punishment, he is considered more a colleague than a convict. But now, Mr. Giarratano, convicted of murdering two women, is running out of appeals. There may be only a Supreme Court decision, and the two-hour drive up Interstate 85, standing between him and the electric chair in Richmond, where seven of his friends have already been executed. Impressed by his intelligence, confident of his innocence, or convinced of his rehabilitation, his friends are frantically seeking to save him. “Joe is unique among folks on death row,” said Richard Burr of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund Inc. “He’s metamorphosed from a confused, erratic addict to someone who’s extraordinarily strong and empathetic, as well as strategically brilliant. No one else has done that.” Gerald T. Zerkin of Richmond, one of Mr. Giarratano’s lawyers, added: “Whether or not he committed these crimes, there’s no question Joe’s a completely different human being than the one that existed in 1979. No one is his right mind could say now that he’s a future danger to anyone.” In 1979, Mr. Giarratano confessed to murdering a 44-year-old Norfolk, Va., woman as well as raping and killing her 15-year-old daughter. At the time, he now says, he was high on drugs and so convinced of his own evil that he admitted to crimes he could not remember committing. After a one-day trial that was actually over by lunch time, he was convicted. To this day, Mr. Giarratano says he does not know whether he killed the mother and daughter, Toni and Michelle Kline. But his lawyers say that conflicting statements he made in his five confessions and evidence obtained in the last two years suggests he did not. They have moved to reopen his case. This is what the lawyers say the new evidence suggests: that Michelle Kline was strangled by a right-handed person, while Mr. Giarratano is left-handed; that the footprints found at the crime scene could not possibly have been made by the boots he had been wearing; that the blood found on his boots did not match that of Toni Kline, who had been stabbed, and that hair found on Michelle Kline, who had been raped, did not match his. Bert L. Rohrer, a spokesman for Attorney General Mary Sue Terry of Virginia, who oversees the case, dismissed Mr. Giarratano’s characterization of the new evidence. “What we have maintained in court is that this new evidence is, frankly, old evidence in different wrapping,” he said. “To this point, obviously, the courts have shared this view.” Three months ago, in fact, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, turned down his appeal. His next, and probably his last, judicial stop is the United States Supreme Court. International Interest in Case In the meantime, the campaign to spare Mr. Giarratano has attracted international interest. News reporters from Britain, West Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden have visited him here, as camera crews from ABC News program “20-20” and the CBS News program “Nightwatch.” So many reporters have come through this remote prison, just north of the North Carolina border, that guards grumble that Mr. Giarratano should hire a press agent. Amnesty International has bought billboard space on his behalf in Richmond. It says: “Virginia: Is Joe Giarratano innocent? Will we kill him without knowing?” The campaign is directed principally at two people: Attorney General Terry and L. Douglas Wilder, the state’s new Governor, who can either pardon Mr. Giarratano, commute his sentence or order a new trial. Newspapers in Fredericksburg, Culpeper, and Charlottesville have endorsed Mr. Giarratano’s drive. “Terry is afraid of appearing to be weak on a law-and-order issue,” The Charlottesville Daily Progress said in an editorial. “She is not afraid, it seems, to risk the death of a possibly innocent man, sacrified for her own ego and political ambitions.” Mr. Rohrer, the Attorney General’s spokesman, called such an assertion ridiculous, and added, “We aren’t influenced by public relations campaigns or editorials.” Governor Could Decide Fate Mr. Giarratano’s fate could rest with Mr. Wilder, who opposed the death penalty when he visited Mecklenburg prison a few years ago, but reversed on the issue in his gubernatorial campaign. A lawyer in the Governor’s office did not return the telephone call of a reporter who sought the Governor’s position on the case. If the past is any precedent, Mr. Giarratano’s prospects of prevailing in Virginia, either judicially or politically, are not good. Virginia’s procedural rules in criminal cases are among the most stringent anywhere, severely limiting the introduction of new evidence and raising of objections after the trial. “Virginia is the most iron-fisted and mean-spirited of the death penalty states,” Mr. Burr said. “In any other state, I’m absolutely certain that Joe wouldn’t be on death row anymore.” Now, like constitutional scholars and death penalty litigators on the outside, Mr. Giarratano is counting heads on the Supreme Court. He knows he needs the votes of four Justices for the Court to take the case and five to win. “Right now, I’m hyper,” he said. “I think I can get four votes, bur the fifth, I don’t know where it’s going to come from, if at all.” Mr. Giarratano, going down the list of Supreme Court Justices, assessed his chances this way: “I’ve got Brenan and Marshall for sure, just because it’s a death case. I think we’ve got a shot at Blackmun and a good shot at Stevens. That fifth vote’s going to be tough. O’Connor seems to have a streak of fairness in her at times, and White could go either way. I don’t know enough about Kennedy to know where he fits in. Scalia and Rehnquist seem to be walking together hand in hand on all this; their attitude in death cases is ‘kill ‘em.’ So forget them.” Mr. Giarratano himself vacillates on his chances. “Some days my gut tells me I’m going to win,” he said. “But last night it told me, ‘Go ahead and pack up your boxes, you’re going to the chair.’ The bottom line is that I could be dead by the end of the year. The prospect of sitting in the electric chair scares the hell out of me. It’s frying. That’s got to be a hell of a way to go.” Even those who any capital punishment view Mr. Giarratano’s case as execution. “There is the run-of-the-mill injustice you get used to in this kind of work, but Joe’s case is different in kind and quality and magnitude,” said Michael Mello, a professor at the Vermont Law School who has represented many death row inmates. “Executing him would be an absolute outrage, not only because of his innocence, but because it would mean the loss of a very sensitive and intelligent commentator.” But some, like Lawrence C. Lawless who prosecuted Mr. Giarratano 10 years ago, are convinced neither of his rehabilitation nor his innocence. Mr. Lawless, now a judge in Norfolk, told The Richmond Times-Dispatch that he is still haunted by the photographs of the two victims. He added that while he is not not a strong proponent of capital punishment, “if they needed a volunteer to push the button, I’d do it off duty, on the weekend. I’d pay my own expenses to Richmond.” With its generic 1970’s institutional architecture, Mecklenburg Prison could pass for a community college campus, but for the Slinky-like coils of security wire surrounding it. It houses 340 inmates, including 40 on its death row, an all-time high facing death in a state that has executed eight prisoners since the Supreme Court reinstituted capital punishment nationally in 1976. Mr. Giarratano, prisoner No. 118475, is now in cell 43. And he is the first to admit that no matter his fate, death row has already saved his life. Mr. Giarratano’s story has many of the hallmarks of juvenile offenders: a fractured family, an abusive mother, a father he did not meet until they were inmates in the same Florida prison 16 years ago. It also includes an early exit from school and an even earlier introduction to drugs. Only when he got to death tow was he able to free himself from drugs: first the ones he had taken himself, then the Thorazine tranquilizer the state psychiatrists gave him. He also stopped attempting suicide. And he found a new calling. It began, he recalled, when a fellow inmate, who has since been executed, lent him a law book. Since then, he has studied the law incessantly, even rapturously. Mr. Giarratano has become a sophisticated student of constitutional law. A right-to-counsel case that he undertook on behalf of another inmate employed a novel legal argument that he helped fashion: an inmate is guaranteed a lawyer while pursuing his last legal remedies beyond normal appeals, not just by the fair trial guarantees of the Sixth Amendment but by the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. He does not actually take cases to court, but helps develop the arguments, which are then presented in court by his lawyers. His argument in that case won in the United States Court of Appeals but lost in the Supreme Court by a vote of 5 to 4. Mr. Giarratano called that decision “wimpy.” A few hours a week, Mr. Giarratano can visit the law library, where he sits in a cage and is handed books through a slot. As a jail house lawyer, Mr. Giarratano has fought for things like increased access for visitors an confidentiality of communications with lawyers. Even guards drop by his cell to ask his legal advice. Should all else fail, Mr. Giarratano is already grooming another death row inmate, Joe Payne, to take his place as Mecklenburg’s in-house counsel. Mr. Payne, he said, is proving to be an apt student. “He still believes too much that the system does what’s right,” Mr. Giarratano said. “But he’s learning.” Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper article Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. University of Mary Washington Notes Additional information regarding your item. This content will not be viewable in the Public View. There are several typos in the article that the transcriber included. "scarified," "no no," and "Even those who any capital punishment view Mr. Giarratono's case. . ." 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 Legal Scholar on Death Row Fights to Halt Own Execution Subject The topic of the resource Death Penalty Giarratano, Joseph Description An account of the resource Legal scholar Joseph Giarratano appeals to the Supreme Court in an attempt to commute his death sentence and save his life. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource New York Times Margolick, David Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Collected documents of Michael Mello 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 1990-03-05 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 3 JPGs 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English appeals David Margolick death penalty Joseph Giarratano Mecklenburg Prison Michael A. Mello New York Times Supreme Court https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/0d0987680be2f75b55b2514aa482fe9b.jpg 85415642496c2430c593b99ee9fed9f2 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 Wilder Grants Death Sentence Reversal 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 RICHMOND, Va.— Gov. L. Douglas Wilder yesterday commuted the death sentence of convicted murderer Joseph M. Giarratano Jr., who wants to attend Vermont Law School if he can get out of jail in his nationally celebrated case. Giarratano’s scheduled electrocution Friday had become a rallying symbol for death-penalty opponents. Wilder’s conditional pardon which is likely to be accepted by Giarratano by a 5 p.m. [Image] today deadline, reduces Giarratano’s sentence to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole 13 years from now. “I’m still suffering from a slight hangover from celebrating last night,” said Vermont Law professor Mike Mello, who has worked with the drug-addicted-turned-legal expert and advocates his release. Mello mailed letters to Vermont politicians weeks ago “begging them to get in touch with Wilder,” and Giarratano called him a half hour before Wilder announced his decision. Speculating on the governor’s motives — he’s frequently mentioned as a possible presidential candidate — Mello said, “I would say it’s about 80 percent politics, 20 percent justice. . . . I’m very, very skeptical of southern governors, especially southern governors who have national political aspirations.” Wilder — who has refused three other pleas for clemency from condemned murderers during his 13 months in office — gave no reason for his decision in the commutation order. “I have thoroughly reviewed the evidence in the case,” Wilder wrote. “. . . . I have been subjected to significant pleas from across the United States and other parts of the world. . . . While they have been sincere in their expressions of concern . . . the overwhelming majority acknowledge that they do not enjoy a grasp of the specific facts in the case. I, on the other hand, do, as I must.” Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Membreno, Clendra 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 Wilder Grants Death Sentence Reversal Subject The topic of the resource Death row Joseph Giarratano Wilder, Douglas, 1931- Description An account of the resource Governor L. Douglas Wilder commuted Joseph M. Giarratano's death sentence. Giarratano's sentence was reduced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole in 13 years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Valley News Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Michael A. Mello 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 1991-02-20 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 Language A language of the resource English conditional pardon death penalty Death Row Douglas Wilder Joseph Giarratano Life sentence Mike Mello https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/ddd8b810aa9b1c0257a185eb73c81ea3.jpg 437c0f4bcd01a189dfc1106144026903 https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/de7ef593840f8d9a08a767c458ee2efd.jpg 0e1a266dae62230697bb9923702dddd7 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 BOYDTON, Va. – Small wonder that Joseph M. Giarrantano was feeling depressed. He had just spent another sleepless night on death row composing the arguments that he hoped would keep him from the electric chair. With his last appeal coming up before the U.S. Supreme Court, Giarratano, 33, a convicted murderer and legal scholar whose case has become and international causee celebre, is increasingly haunted by his impending execution. “It’s not so much that I’m scared to die,” Giarratano said as he sat handcuffed in a visiting cell at the Mecklenburg Correctional Center last week. “But the whole death ritual – of being moved into this cell, strapped into a chair, and fried to death – that’s frightening, and I don’t know how I’m going to deal with that.” Two factors make Giarratano’s case unusual. The first is the former junkie’s transformation into a respected jailhouse lawyer who has won important prisoners’ rights cases and serves as a consultant to lawyers in capital cases nationwide. The second is the discovery of evidence that casts doubt on Giarratano’s guilt in the murder of a 44-year-old Norfolk woman and the rape and murder of her 15-year-old daughter – evidence the courts have declined to consider because of procedural technicalities. The result, Giarratano’s supporters fear, is that a possibly innocent man – whose rehabilitation is virtually unquestioned – may be put to death. “It would be an extraordinary tragedy, really just an incredible loss – personally to me, but really to the legal community and to Virginia,” said Michael A. Mello, an assistant professor at Vermont Law School in South Royalton, Vt. “Joe is a person who has made one of the most remarkable metamorphoses of any person I have ever known,” said Richard H. Burr 3d of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, one of Giarratano’s lawyers. “I don’t know of another case that has gone to the Supreme Court that presents more serious questions about innocence.” But Bert L. Rohrer, a spokesperson for Virginia Attorney General Mary Sue Terry, who has successfully opposed Giarratano’s bid for a new trial, said last week that rehabilitation was “really not an issue to us.” “We have taken the position… that there is no new evidence,” only “old evidence in new wrapping,” he said. Giarratano, a sometime scallopboat worker who says he spent years in a cocaine- and Dilaudad-inducaed haze, fled to Florida and turned himself in to Jacksonville police in 1979. He said he had found Barbara Kline, known as Toni, and her daughter, Michelle, dead in the apartment that he shared with them and believed he had committed the murders. Giarratano gave police five conflicting confessions and turned down an offer of a life sentence in return for a guilty plea because he felt he deserved to be executed. Despite a suicide attempt, he was judged competent to stand trial, convicted and sentenced to death after a morning long, non-jury trial. Giarratano, who was given the powerful tranquilizer Thorazine by prison authorities, said he had little will to live and kept dropping his appeals. In 1983, tormented by voices in his head, he let himself come within 24 hours of being electrocuted. “I had just given up completely. [I believed] I was rotten, evil, sick individual, and I deserved to die,” he said. “What I didn’t count on happening was Marie Deans.” Deans, now executive director of Virginia Coalition on Jails and Prisons, which provides legal assistance to indigent inmates, told Giarratano that his life “was worth living, that I was worth something,” he said. “That’s something I had never heard from anybody.” As Deans gained his trust, he revealed horrific details of his childhood in Jacksonville. “Both myself and my sister were sexually abused by my stepfather. Both of us were physically abused by my mother,” Giarratano said last week. “And the abuse was rough – she would use things like cattle prods. I got the hell beat out of me with a steel-handled broom for buying the wrong brand of potato chips.” By age 11, he had begun a descent into alcohol and drug addition. He quit school in the eight or ninth grade. At 15, after slashing his wrists and attempting a drug overdose, her was hospitalized, he said. At 17, to punish him for escaping from reform school, Giarratano was sent to prison, where he had a brief encounter – with his natural father, also a junkie. His father offered to help him obtain more drugs, he said. By 21, he was in Virginia, living with the Klines. One day, he awoke in the apartment and went to the bathroom. “And that’s when I saw them – Toni laying in the bathroom. There was just blood splattered everywhere,” he said. Giarratano says he has never had any memory of killing the Klines. Nor did he have a motive. But, believing he must have been the perpetrator, he made up the confessions and managed to convince the authorities of his guilt, he said. With conseling and encouragement from Deans, Giarratano has come into his own as a person and as a legal scholar. In Giarratano v. Bass, he obtained for prisoners the right to confidential communications with their lawyers and paralegals. In Murray v. Giarratano, he won a decision guaranteeing inmates the right to counsel after their first round of appeals. The ruling was struck down last year by the U.S. Supreme Court, 5-4. But it was not until last year that Giarratano became convinced of his innocence in the Kline murders. Deans, with the backing of a German art gallery owner who had heard of the case, had hired an investigator to explore Giarratano’s past. The investigator returned with doubts about his guilt. Now, Giarratano and his attorneys argue that physical evidence on the scene – bloody footprints, unidentified pubic hairs, fingerprints – points away from Giarratano. They say Michelle Kline was strangled by a right-handed person, while Giarratano is left-handed. At the very least, they argue, Giarratano was incompetent to stant trial. And they say they have unearthed a more likely suspect – a boyfriend of Barbara Kline’s with a felony record that includes sexual violence against women. So far, however, the authorities have declined to pursue the matter. “I didn’t want to hear anything about innocence,” said Giarratano. “Now, it seems like all of this has been a lie….It’s all premised on my accepting responsibility for something I didn’t do.” Still, Giarratano is facing death – as early as June, he says, unless the Supreme Court orders a new trial or Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, a one-time death penalty opponent, commutes his sentence. Meanwhile, Amnesty International has taken up his case. And ever since 1986 British television documentary featuring him, Giarratano has received increasing press attention – first in Europe, then in the U.S. media, and, finally in Virginia, where editorialists across the state are calling for a new trial. Lawrence C. Lawless, who prosecuted Giarratano, remains convinced of his guilt. “If they needed a volunteer to push the button, I’d do it off-duty on the weekend,” he has told Richmond Times-Dispatch. With his final appeal brief due April 24, Giarratano said he was almost afraid the think of a life outside of prison, which might include law school and a career as public-interest lawyer. “I was doing better,” he said. “Now, I’m really feeling the pressure.” Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Mocarski, Casey 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 He's a jailhouse lawyer-and a condemned man Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Language A language of the resource English Subject The topic of the resource Death row Joseph Giarratano Jailhouse lawyer Description An account of the resource With new evidence, a man on death row may be released. He was convicted of the murder and rape of two women, confessed, and has withdrawn his confession to pursue his innocence. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource The Philadelphia Inquirer Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1990-04-08 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 JPG Giarratano Jailhouse lawyer Joseph Joseph Giarratano Kline murders https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/8a511095d19e3fde76afbbd768ab042e.jpg bbae588c2ddf046545cd601a100865f9 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 letter from death row Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Subject The topic of the resource The prospect of capital punishment Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Newspaper Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 jpg. Language A language of the resource English 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 Let me ask a favor. Take a couple of minutes, if you will, to read a letter from Joe Giarratano. He is on death row in Virginia’s prison at Boydton. On Oct. 1 the Supreme Court turned down his last appeal. His legal roads have run out. If Gov. Doug Wilder refuses to intervene, Joe will be executed before the end of the year. By way of background: On the unchallenged record, Joe Giarratano was the product of a sordid childhood. He had a limited high school education. Those facts do not excuse, but they help to explain. In February 1979, when this sad chapter began, Giarratano was 21 years old, a drug addict, a drunkard, and a drifter working on a fish boat. The ugly details of the crime are now irrelevant. Joe was charged and convicted of the rape-murder of a 15-year-old girl and the murder of her mother. The only evidence against him came from five separate confessions he signed in the hours immediately after the arrest. The confessions were internally inconsistent: they smacked of police coaching. Following a brief non-jury trial, a judge sentenced him to death. That was almost 12 years ago. He has been spent his time studying law and remaking his life. I learned of the case three years ago. I spent hours reading the record and came away deeply troubled. I’m not sure Joe is guilty: I’m not sure he is innocent; but I’ve spent 50 years covering courts and I am certain of this: He was not convicted beyond a reasonable doubt. Now to the letter. It is dated Oct. 8, 1990: “I truly appreciate the efforts you have made on my behalf, and for bringing my plight to the attention of the public through your columns. Knowing that folks really care has been boon for my morale.” “Overall I am holding up well, and I remain hopeful. The news from the U.S. Supreme Court came as a surprise, though it is terribly frustrating to see that procedural default mechanisms can outweigh the truth-finding process in such obdurate fashion.” “Even though I understand the judiciary’s frustration with the capital cases, I really find it impossible to reconcile that imbalance with the Constitution (state or federal). The ball is now in the governor’s court, and I can only hope that he will exercise his executive authority.” “In the meanwhile my chin is up, and I keep fairly busy. I’ve recently completed an article for the Yale Law Journal. It is in the final editing stages. And I in the process of co-authoring another law review with Professor Mike Mello (Vermont Law School). The subject is the ‘forgotten’ Ninth Amendment of our Constitution.” “Early in November, 50 law students from Georgetown and Maryland will be coming to the prison, and I plan to talk to them about the Ninth Amendment and Lockean political theory and its role in the formation of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.” “I’ve given two talks like this in the past, and I was amazed to discover how little is known about the historical underpinnings of the Constitution.” A personal note: I am not opposed to the death sentence. Given a killer in the weird mold of Ted Bundy, I see no reason for society to keep such a monster alive. The prospect of capital punishment may not be a deterrent to rape or murder – I doubt that it is, but that issue defies resolution. In truly heinous cases, a death sentence ought to be available to a jury as an option. But let me ask: what would be the point in killing Joe Giarratano now? In all my instincts I am a man of the law. But Joe was convicted 12 years ago by a single trial judge on evidence of doubtful reliability. The confused, suicidal drug addict of 1979 is gone. In his place one finds a young man with a good mind and a healthy outlook on life. How would killing him avenge the victims or sustain respect for judicial process? Some useful purpose ought to be served by putting Joe to death. I see no useful purpose at all. Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Hunter-Sowers, Ruby 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 A letter from death row Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kilpatrick, James K 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. Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment Description An account of the resource A newspaper article regarding capital punishment which includes a letter written by death row inmate Joe Giarratano. The Ninth Amendment is referenced addressing constitutional law and the existence of "unenumerated" rights outside those expressly protected by the Bill of Rights. Giarratano references in his letter the Lokean political theory which provides additional inquiry. Columnist James K. Kilpatrick expresses concern with the brief, non-jury trial, Giarratano had along with a case for reasonable doubt. Language A language of the resource English Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1990-10-08 capital punishment Joe Giarratano Joseph Giarratano Mike Mello Ninth amendment https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/88990e54afcb4412df5584abf29d5c42.jpg 240b6b8a1ca88bd7e7fc80a19dc6ddc2 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 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Magazine Article Text Any textual data included in the document Friday’s decision by a Vermont federal judge to allow DNA testing as evidence is the first of many federal court rulings on a controversial issue that may ultimately wind up in the nation’s highest court. The opinion from U.S. District Judge Franklin S. Billings Jr. is the first written ruling addressing the admissibility and reliability of DNA testing to identify suspects in rape and murder cases. But the issue is far from settled. Professor Michael Mello of Vermont Law School said while the ruling would not set a precedent for state courts to follow, it would have an effect. “Especially since Judge Billings is a respected judge, it would have a persuasive effect,” Mello said. “The court to watch is the court of appeals.” Professor Ken Kreiling, a Vermont Law School professor who has written on the uses of scientific evidence in trials, said Friday’s decision was significant because the defense was able to effectively contest the prosecution’s experts. “There are very few cases in which it has been hotly contested and the defense had the resources to hotly contest it,” he said. Both Mello and Kreiling said there was still not enough scientific evidence and established procedure to use the tests in criminal trials. “One of the things I think is important is there are a number of different procedures. The labs sometime don't follow their own procedure. They kind of ad hoc as they go and what does that say for reliability,” Kreiling said. “Most scientists say you don’t deem something to be scientific and reliable until there’s a clear protocol, until the designers are willing to put it into publications, willing to put it into the journals and defend it.” But a California assistant district attorney who has successfully prosecuted two cases using NA testing said the proof of its reliability was in the overwhelming acceptance in state courts. “There have been one or two or three defense successes and a couple hundred prosecution successes,” said Rock Harmon of the Oakland District Attorney’s office. “There’s a clue there. There’s a subtle hint that the debate should focus on something more worthwhile.” California prosecutors have successfully overridden 12 challenges by defense attorneys in getting DNA testing admitted into evidence, he said. “We’ve been successful in every case.” Mello said that the trend in courts was to admit DNA testing and let a jury decide its credibility. “Until there’s more evidence in the scientific community, more consensus, it shouldn’t be admitted at all,” he argued. “The judges have got a role in determining the reliability of evidence, especially this kind of potentially misleading evidence. That’s a very emotionally powerful tool to out in the hands of a prosecutor, especially when the defense side doesn’t get the resources to combat that.” While DNA testing had proven reliable, Kreiling said how the test was conducted must be weighted. “For lawyers to be able to look at all of these levels and bring in experts possesses incredible problems. That suggests to me that we ought to bend over backwards before we admit this stuff.” Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Matragrano, Katey 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 Ruling Over DNA Testing To Have Impact Subject The topic of the resource Billings, Franklin S., 1922- Mello, Michael Description An account of the resource An article about the approval for use of DNA testing in federal court rulings. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Maynard, Michael Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Rutland Daily 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 1990-09-20 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 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 and California California DNA testing Franklin S. Billings Jr. Kenneth Kreiling Michael A. Mello Vermont https://www.hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/52494e485716d967b479f0c8406024c7.jpg f12f0ae9883b922756a309cb101638d6 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 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. Lockett, Darron Notes Additional information regarding your item. This content will not be viewable in the Public View. No newspaper publisher available. No exact date is explicitly listed, but context in the article (twelve years after Ferbuary 1979) places the article around 1991, with the month and day remaining open to speculation. Present information in the metadata claims the publisher is The Miami Herald, but that data is not present in the article. Text Any textual data included in the document RICHMOND, Va. – Let me ask a favor. Take a couple of minutes, if you will, to read a letter from Joe Giarratano. He is on death row in Virginia’s prison at Boydton. On Oct. 1, the Supreme Court turned down his last appeal. His legal roads have run out. If Gov. Doug Wilder refuses to interview, Joe will be executed before the end of the year. By way of background: On the unchallenged record, Joe Giarratano was the product of a sordid childhood. He had a limited high school education. Those facts do not excuse, but they help explain. In February 1979, Giarratano was 21 years old, a drug addict, a drunkard, a drifter working on a fish boat out of Newport News. No man is worthless in the eyes of God, but in 1979, Joe was right at the bottom of the heap. The ugly details of the crime are now irrelevant. Joe was charged and convicted of the rape-murder of a 15-year-old girl and the murder of her mother. The only evidence against him came from five separate confessions he signed in the hours immediately after the arrest. The confessions were internally inconsistent; they smacked of police coaching. Following a brief non-jury trial, a judge sentenced him to death. That was almost 12 years ago. He has been in prison ever since. He has spent his time studying law and remaking his life. I learned of the case three years ago. I spent hours reading the record and came away deeply troubled. I am not sure whether Joe is guilty; I am not sure he is innocent; but I have spent 50 years covering courts and I am certain of this: He was not convicted beyond a reasonable doubt. Now to the letter. It is dated Oct. 7, 1990: “I truly appreciate the efforts you have made on my behalf, and for bring my plight to the attention of the public through your columns. Knowing that folks really care has been a real boon for my morale. “Overall I am holding up well, and I remain hopeful. The news from the U.S. Supreme Court came as no surprise, though it is a terribly frustrating to see that procedural default mechanisms can outweigh the truth-finding process in such an obdurate fashion. Even though I understand the judiciary’s frustrations with capital cases, I really find it impossible to reconcile that imbalance with the constitution (state or federal). The ball is now in the governor’s court, and I can only hope that he will exercise his executive authority. “In the meanwhile my chin is up, and I keep fairly busy. I’ve recently completed and article for the Yale Law journal (‘A Cautionary Tale; Fallibility vs. Finality’). It is in the final editing stages. And I am in the process of co-authoring another law review with Professor Mike Mellow (Vermont Law School). The subject is the ‘forgotten’ Ninth Amendment of our Constitution. “Early in November, 50 law students from Georgetown and Maryland will be coming to the prison, and I plan to talk with them about the ninth Amendment and Lockean political theory and its role in the formation of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. I’ve given two talks like this in the past, and I was amazed to discover how little is known about the historical underpinnings of the Constitution. Amazed isn’t the proper word because my ignorance was on par with theirs until just a couple of years ago. “Anyway, I have rambled on enough. I simply wanted to send you a note of thanks. If things work out for me I hope we can one day meet. Please do not feel obliged to respond to this letter. I know that you are a busy man. Be well, and keep telling it like it is.” A personal note: I am not opposed to the death sentence. Given a killer in the weird mold of Ted Bundy, I see no reason for society to keep such a monster alive. The prospect of capital punishment may not be a deterrent to rape or murder – I doubt that it is, but that issue defies resolution. In truly heinous cases, a death sentence out to be available to a jury as an option. But let me ask: what would be the point in killing Joe Giarratano now? In all of my instincts, I am a man of the law. The judgments of a court ought not to be flouted. But Joe was convicted 12 years ago by a single trial judge on evidence of doubtful reliability. The confused, suicidal drug addict of 1979 is gone. In his place one finds a young man with a good mind and healthy outlook on life. How would killing him avenge the victims or sustain respect for judicial process? Some useful purpose ought to be served by putting Joe to death. I see no useful purpose and all. 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 Senseless Punishment Demands Justice Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment Description An account of the resource Columnist James Kilpatrick writing on death row inmate Joe Giarratano's court case; questioning conviction. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kilpatrick, James 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 1991 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 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Law, Human Rights, Capital Punishment, Supreme Court Cases 1979 1991 capital punishment Human Rights Supreme Court