Case shows changing role of governors in death appeals
Dublin Core
Title
Case shows changing role of governors in death appeals
Subject
Capital punishment
Spaziano, Joe
Description
As a result of the 1993 U.S. Supreme Court case, Herrera vs. Collins, state governors became the designated figures to acknowledge the most belated claims of innocence in old capital cases. However, after Tony DiLisio recanted his previous testimony, which incriminated Joe Spaziano, Gov. Lawton Chiles signed a new death warrant for Spaziano based on evidence gathered from a confidential investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. By using secret evidence to reinforce Spaziano’s execution, death-penalty critics believe Chiles’ actions to be unconstitutional.
Creator
McKinnon, John D.
Source
McKinnon, John D. "Case shows changing role of governors in death appeals." The Miami Herald, September 2, 1995, A1.
Publisher
HIST 298, University of Mary Washington
Date
1995-09-02
Rights
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
2 JPGs
300 DPI
Language
English
Coverage
Tallahassee, FL
Text Item Type Metadata
Text
[first page]
[heading]
Case shows changing role of governors in death appeals
By John D. McKinnon
Herald Legal Correspondent
[start of the first column]
TALLAHASSEE -- Joe Spaziano, scheduled to die this month in Florida's electric chair, is a wrongly-convicted man, his attorney argues, a mistake the state wants to bury.
But What's just as bad, his lawyer says, is the way Florida officials are going about it: By using secret evidence to justify Spaziano's execution, they're burying the whole case.
"A constitutional abomination," gripes Michael Mello, Spaziano's volunteer lawyer.
Without intending to, state officials also have thrust the Spa-
[end of the first column]
[start of the second column]
How should inmates' belated claims of innocence be handled?
[text] ziano case into the middle of one of the hottest debates in death penalty law. The question is this: As more and more condemned inmates raise belated and frequently bogus claims of innocence, how should the system handle them?
In particular, as judges make it
[start of the third column]
harder for inmates to raise such claims in court, how should governors still have unchecked powers in matters of life and death, like kings of old?
Or should governors be forced to hear the prisoners' pleas all over again?
In Florida, the question came up when Gov. Lawton Chiles signed a new death warrant for Spaziano based on the results of a confidential investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Chiles asked for the investigation after the key
[end of the third column]
PLEASE SEE SPAZIANO, 10A
[heading] Critics question use of 'secret' evidence to justify execution
SPAZIANO, FROM 1A
[start of the first column]
witness in Spaziano's trial 20 years ago recanted his testimony.
Spaziano, an Outlaws motorcycle gang member, was convicted in 1975 of murdering an 18-year-old Orlando woman, Laura Harberts. But the key witness at trial, Tony DiLisio, said in June that he wasn't shown Harberts' body by Spaziano as he had testified, but was manipulated by police and a government-hired hypnotist.
According to summaries of the FDLE investigation, the agency has located people who said they recalled hearing statements over the years that implicated Spaziano. None of the witnesses have been identified, none of their statements have been disclosed.
Few, if any, of the statements appear to be admissible in court because they're hearsay. Those that might be admissible come from a former biker who's in a federal witness protection program -- just the sort of witness that juries often disbelieve.
The state's Public Records Law specifically allows clemency records to be kept secret and Chiles says he intends to keep the names and statements in the investigation confidential. Some of the witnesses were promised anonymity, out of fear of the Outlaws, officials say.
That hasn't been enough to satisfy some death penalty critics.
"It seems as if there's something that he's hiding," said Kica Matos, research director for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's Capital Punishment Project.
"It sure ain't fair," said William T. Geimer, a Washington and Lee University law professor and nationally recognized death penalty expert.
Maybe. But is it legal?
Based on the courts' traditional approach to the death penalty experts say, the answer would appear to be: Yes.
"The problem is that the courts -- the federal courts and the Supreme Court especially -- have always been extremely reluctant to say anything to governors about how to conduct their business at the end of a death-penalty case," says Hugo Adam Bedau, a Tufts University professor.
That tradition is under growing pressure, experts say, as condemned inmates raise more and more claims of innocence, and federal judges are finding more and more ways to avoid hearing them.
Such claims have been multiplying as wily death-penalty appeal lawyers shift their focus from attacking capital-punishment laws to attacking the facts of their clients' cases.
And innocence claims have a
[end of the first column]
[start of the second column]
big advantage, appeals lawyers have found: After 10 or 15 years, even solid murder cases become vulnerable to assault. Evidence corrodes or breaks down. Police lose their files.
A surprising number of people turn up who are able or willing to take the rap -- for instance, other inmates who are suffering from terminal illness or who've died. That has happened more than once in recent years, to the enormous frustration of officials like Chiles.
"The [death penalty lawyers] are good," Chiles said in a recent interview with the Herald editorial board. "They have something in every one of these cases."
While Florida's Supreme Court has remained relatively
[end of the second column]
[start of the third column]
open to new claims of innocence, many other judges -- especially federal judges -- are getting fed up.
"They've become convinced that all the innocence issues anyone raises are fraudulent," says Bruce Ledewitz, a Duquesne University law professor and a noted capital punishment opponent. The problem is, Ledewitz argues, the federal courts "haven't yet come up with any system that winnow out the good claims from the bad ones. They've just decided to execute everyone."
The federal courts' resistance to innocence claims crystalized in a case called Herrera vs. Collins, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1993. In the Herrera case, the high court
[end of the third column]
[start of the fourth column]
decided that federal courts didn't have to hear most belated claims of innocence in old capital cases because that's what state governors were for.
And that's created the latest legal issue for Spaziano.
"The Herrera decision blesses governors as a part of the capital punishment process," explains Geimer, the Washington and Lee University professor. "So if they are now going to be a part of the process, the next question is, are there going to be rules? Can you have a secret investigation?"
Contends Daniel T. Kobil, a law professor at Capital University in Ohio: "It seems to me that if the governor's clemency power is to serve as a failsafe in our constitutional system, it has to be administered in a fundamentally
[end of the fourth column]
[start of the fifth column]
fair way. This one-sided, secretive procedure the Florida governor is engaging in seems to me to fall far short of that."
Spaziano's lawyer, Vermont law professor Mello, is making exactly that argument to the state Supreme Court in seeking to se the report.
"He doesn't have any right to look at it," replies Dexter Douglass, the governor's general counsel. "The governor's not a court."
Mello is a former West Palm Beach public defender.
[end of article]
[heading]
Case shows changing role of governors in death appeals
By John D. McKinnon
Herald Legal Correspondent
[start of the first column]
TALLAHASSEE -- Joe Spaziano, scheduled to die this month in Florida's electric chair, is a wrongly-convicted man, his attorney argues, a mistake the state wants to bury.
But What's just as bad, his lawyer says, is the way Florida officials are going about it: By using secret evidence to justify Spaziano's execution, they're burying the whole case.
"A constitutional abomination," gripes Michael Mello, Spaziano's volunteer lawyer.
Without intending to, state officials also have thrust the Spa-
[end of the first column]
[start of the second column]
How should inmates' belated claims of innocence be handled?
[text] ziano case into the middle of one of the hottest debates in death penalty law. The question is this: As more and more condemned inmates raise belated and frequently bogus claims of innocence, how should the system handle them?
In particular, as judges make it
[start of the third column]
harder for inmates to raise such claims in court, how should governors still have unchecked powers in matters of life and death, like kings of old?
Or should governors be forced to hear the prisoners' pleas all over again?
In Florida, the question came up when Gov. Lawton Chiles signed a new death warrant for Spaziano based on the results of a confidential investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Chiles asked for the investigation after the key
[end of the third column]
PLEASE SEE SPAZIANO, 10A
[heading] Critics question use of 'secret' evidence to justify execution
SPAZIANO, FROM 1A
[start of the first column]
witness in Spaziano's trial 20 years ago recanted his testimony.
Spaziano, an Outlaws motorcycle gang member, was convicted in 1975 of murdering an 18-year-old Orlando woman, Laura Harberts. But the key witness at trial, Tony DiLisio, said in June that he wasn't shown Harberts' body by Spaziano as he had testified, but was manipulated by police and a government-hired hypnotist.
According to summaries of the FDLE investigation, the agency has located people who said they recalled hearing statements over the years that implicated Spaziano. None of the witnesses have been identified, none of their statements have been disclosed.
Few, if any, of the statements appear to be admissible in court because they're hearsay. Those that might be admissible come from a former biker who's in a federal witness protection program -- just the sort of witness that juries often disbelieve.
The state's Public Records Law specifically allows clemency records to be kept secret and Chiles says he intends to keep the names and statements in the investigation confidential. Some of the witnesses were promised anonymity, out of fear of the Outlaws, officials say.
That hasn't been enough to satisfy some death penalty critics.
"It seems as if there's something that he's hiding," said Kica Matos, research director for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's Capital Punishment Project.
"It sure ain't fair," said William T. Geimer, a Washington and Lee University law professor and nationally recognized death penalty expert.
Maybe. But is it legal?
Based on the courts' traditional approach to the death penalty experts say, the answer would appear to be: Yes.
"The problem is that the courts -- the federal courts and the Supreme Court especially -- have always been extremely reluctant to say anything to governors about how to conduct their business at the end of a death-penalty case," says Hugo Adam Bedau, a Tufts University professor.
That tradition is under growing pressure, experts say, as condemned inmates raise more and more claims of innocence, and federal judges are finding more and more ways to avoid hearing them.
Such claims have been multiplying as wily death-penalty appeal lawyers shift their focus from attacking capital-punishment laws to attacking the facts of their clients' cases.
And innocence claims have a
[end of the first column]
[start of the second column]
big advantage, appeals lawyers have found: After 10 or 15 years, even solid murder cases become vulnerable to assault. Evidence corrodes or breaks down. Police lose their files.
A surprising number of people turn up who are able or willing to take the rap -- for instance, other inmates who are suffering from terminal illness or who've died. That has happened more than once in recent years, to the enormous frustration of officials like Chiles.
"The [death penalty lawyers] are good," Chiles said in a recent interview with the Herald editorial board. "They have something in every one of these cases."
While Florida's Supreme Court has remained relatively
[end of the second column]
[start of the third column]
open to new claims of innocence, many other judges -- especially federal judges -- are getting fed up.
"They've become convinced that all the innocence issues anyone raises are fraudulent," says Bruce Ledewitz, a Duquesne University law professor and a noted capital punishment opponent. The problem is, Ledewitz argues, the federal courts "haven't yet come up with any system that winnow out the good claims from the bad ones. They've just decided to execute everyone."
The federal courts' resistance to innocence claims crystalized in a case called Herrera vs. Collins, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1993. In the Herrera case, the high court
[end of the third column]
[start of the fourth column]
decided that federal courts didn't have to hear most belated claims of innocence in old capital cases because that's what state governors were for.
And that's created the latest legal issue for Spaziano.
"The Herrera decision blesses governors as a part of the capital punishment process," explains Geimer, the Washington and Lee University professor. "So if they are now going to be a part of the process, the next question is, are there going to be rules? Can you have a secret investigation?"
Contends Daniel T. Kobil, a law professor at Capital University in Ohio: "It seems to me that if the governor's clemency power is to serve as a failsafe in our constitutional system, it has to be administered in a fundamentally
[end of the fourth column]
[start of the fifth column]
fair way. This one-sided, secretive procedure the Florida governor is engaging in seems to me to fall far short of that."
Spaziano's lawyer, Vermont law professor Mello, is making exactly that argument to the state Supreme Court in seeking to se the report.
"He doesn't have any right to look at it," replies Dexter Douglass, the governor's general counsel. "The governor's not a court."
Mello is a former West Palm Beach public defender.
[end of article]
Original Format
Newspaper
Vol. No./Issue No.
vol. 68, issue 5
Contributor of the Digital Item
Friedrich, Alex
Student Editor of the Digital Item
Williams, Megan
Files
Citation
McKinnon, John D., “Case shows changing role of governors in death appeals,” HIST299, accessed July 7, 2024, http://hist299.umwhistory.org/items/show/198.