Attorney problems complicate Spaziano case
Dublin Core
Title
Attorney problems complicate Spaziano case
Subject
Capital punishment
Description
Attorney Michael Mello is left with little time or support to work on Joseph Spaziano's case after the organization supporting Mello on the case is shut down only three weeks before Spaziano's execution.
Creator
Greenberg, David
Source
The Gainesville Sun
Publisher
HIST 298, University of Mary Washington
Date
1995-09-3
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
1 JPG
300 DPI
Language
English
Text Item Type Metadata
Text
[heading] Attorney problems complicate Spaziano case
[start of the first column]
A convicted killer scheduled for execution Sept. 21 in Florida’s electric chair is being represented during what may be the last three weeks of his life by an attorney who is teaching full time at a Vermont law school and has no assistance here.
Joseph Spaziano’s attorney, Michael Mello, must work on the case without the usual support staff because the organization that does that work has lost its funding and is closing down.
[end of the first column]
[start of the second column]
“This is an innocent guy in the middle of a very complex factual investigation,” Mello said. “He’s about to be executed in three weeks and for all practical purposes, he doesn’t have a lawyer.”
Complicating Mello’s ability to provide a defense is that new investigative information about the case has been ordered confidential by Gox. Lawton Chiles.
Dexter Douglass, Chiles’ clemency attorney, says all those arguments are simply defense tactics.
[end of the second column]
[start of the third column]
Spaziano, who will be 50 on Sept. 12, is accused of the 1973 murder of Orlando nurse Laura Lynn Harberts, whose sexually mutilated body was found in a trash dump near Altamonte Springs, a suburb of Orlando.
Spaziano, a former member of the Outlaw motorcycle gang, was convicted primarily on the testimony of a man named Tony Dilisio and Harberts’ roommate, who told authorities she heard Harberts talking on the phone with a man named Joe before she was murdered.
Spaziano had been under his fourth death warrant in June when Dilidio told The Miami Herald that he gave his
[end of the third column]
See Spaziano on Page 2B
[heading]
Spaziano
Continued from Page 1B
[start of the fourth column]
Testimony under hypnosis. Testimony taken under hypnosis was admissible in Florida at the time, but is no longer.
Chiles stayed the execution and asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate Dilisio’d comments.
The FDLE report was submitted to Chiles several weeks ago and a new death warrant was signed last week. Chiles will not release the contents of the FDLE report, but Douglass said it confirms Spaziano’s guilt.
“That information is not going to become public at any time,” Douglass said. “We don’t need that information, just the findings from 15 court decisions that these are legal sentences.”
The day after the warrant was signed, the Volunteer Lawyers Post-Conviction Defender Organization notified Mello that because of a $1.5 million cut in federal funding, it will shut down Sept. 30. The organization has been ordered by its directors to stop working on cases immediately.
That left Mello, who started teaching classes the following day, without any Florida lawyers working with him and without the services of Stephen Gustat, the organization investigator who was doing research for him.
Jennider Greenberg, the organization’s co-director, ex-
[end of the fourth column]
[start of the fifth column]
plained the problem to Mello in an Aug. 28 letter.
“We tried our best to inform the governor’s people about the impossibility of us representing or assisting pro bono counsel in representing anyone under an active death warrant during this phase in our existence,” Greenberg wrote. “Inexplicably, the governor chose to seek Joe’s execution nonetheless.”
The Office of Capital Collateral Representatives, the state agency that represents most Death Row inmates in Florida, cannot defend Spaziano because it has a conflict in the case.
Mello said that in his 12 years of defending death row inmates, he has never faced a situation like this.
“I thought I had seen it all,” he said. “I’ve never had my whole investigative arm evaporate on the eve of a fifth death warrant in the face of a whitewash, fraudulent and now secret police investigation that the governor’s counsel has lied about, when I am representing an innocent man.”
Douglass said Mello is just trying to create an issue in a losing case, and that he does have an investigator – he said the news media have helped investigate the case.
Meanwhile, Mello has asked The Florida Bar and the state Supreme Court for advice.
“I have real reservations about whether I can render effective counsel,” he said. “Joe has a right to counsel in Florida. I don’t know that I can give it to him. But if I withdraw, he has no lawyer. Yet without investigation, I’m nothing but the illusion of a lawyer. I just don’t know what to do.”
[end of the fifth column]
[end of the article]
[start of the first column]
A convicted killer scheduled for execution Sept. 21 in Florida’s electric chair is being represented during what may be the last three weeks of his life by an attorney who is teaching full time at a Vermont law school and has no assistance here.
Joseph Spaziano’s attorney, Michael Mello, must work on the case without the usual support staff because the organization that does that work has lost its funding and is closing down.
[end of the first column]
[start of the second column]
“This is an innocent guy in the middle of a very complex factual investigation,” Mello said. “He’s about to be executed in three weeks and for all practical purposes, he doesn’t have a lawyer.”
Complicating Mello’s ability to provide a defense is that new investigative information about the case has been ordered confidential by Gox. Lawton Chiles.
Dexter Douglass, Chiles’ clemency attorney, says all those arguments are simply defense tactics.
[end of the second column]
[start of the third column]
Spaziano, who will be 50 on Sept. 12, is accused of the 1973 murder of Orlando nurse Laura Lynn Harberts, whose sexually mutilated body was found in a trash dump near Altamonte Springs, a suburb of Orlando.
Spaziano, a former member of the Outlaw motorcycle gang, was convicted primarily on the testimony of a man named Tony Dilisio and Harberts’ roommate, who told authorities she heard Harberts talking on the phone with a man named Joe before she was murdered.
Spaziano had been under his fourth death warrant in June when Dilidio told The Miami Herald that he gave his
[end of the third column]
See Spaziano on Page 2B
[heading]
Spaziano
Continued from Page 1B
[start of the fourth column]
Testimony under hypnosis. Testimony taken under hypnosis was admissible in Florida at the time, but is no longer.
Chiles stayed the execution and asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate Dilisio’d comments.
The FDLE report was submitted to Chiles several weeks ago and a new death warrant was signed last week. Chiles will not release the contents of the FDLE report, but Douglass said it confirms Spaziano’s guilt.
“That information is not going to become public at any time,” Douglass said. “We don’t need that information, just the findings from 15 court decisions that these are legal sentences.”
The day after the warrant was signed, the Volunteer Lawyers Post-Conviction Defender Organization notified Mello that because of a $1.5 million cut in federal funding, it will shut down Sept. 30. The organization has been ordered by its directors to stop working on cases immediately.
That left Mello, who started teaching classes the following day, without any Florida lawyers working with him and without the services of Stephen Gustat, the organization investigator who was doing research for him.
Jennider Greenberg, the organization’s co-director, ex-
[end of the fourth column]
[start of the fifth column]
plained the problem to Mello in an Aug. 28 letter.
“We tried our best to inform the governor’s people about the impossibility of us representing or assisting pro bono counsel in representing anyone under an active death warrant during this phase in our existence,” Greenberg wrote. “Inexplicably, the governor chose to seek Joe’s execution nonetheless.”
The Office of Capital Collateral Representatives, the state agency that represents most Death Row inmates in Florida, cannot defend Spaziano because it has a conflict in the case.
Mello said that in his 12 years of defending death row inmates, he has never faced a situation like this.
“I thought I had seen it all,” he said. “I’ve never had my whole investigative arm evaporate on the eve of a fifth death warrant in the face of a whitewash, fraudulent and now secret police investigation that the governor’s counsel has lied about, when I am representing an innocent man.”
Douglass said Mello is just trying to create an issue in a losing case, and that he does have an investigator – he said the news media have helped investigate the case.
Meanwhile, Mello has asked The Florida Bar and the state Supreme Court for advice.
“I have real reservations about whether I can render effective counsel,” he said. “Joe has a right to counsel in Florida. I don’t know that I can give it to him. But if I withdraw, he has no lawyer. Yet without investigation, I’m nothing but the illusion of a lawyer. I just don’t know what to do.”
[end of the fifth column]
[end of the article]
Original Format
Newspaper
Contributor of the Digital Item
Treese, Paige
Student Editor of the Digital Item
Williams, Megan
Files
Citation
Greenberg, David, “Attorney problems complicate Spaziano case,” HIST299, accessed July 7, 2024, http://hist299.umwhistory.org/items/show/199.