1 20 60 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/06f2fa2b432616ee6ad541404e3c18b2.jpg 4f2c05017db6a82b877eedfe2a6bb8de 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 [[Chair-image]] ‘The death penalty is a fact of life, if that isn’t an oxymoron’: North Carolina chair Lawyers go to the Supreme Court with what may be the final broad test of capital punishment When Gara LaMarche moved to Texas to become the new head of the state Civil Liberties Union, he felt a duty to participate in protests outside the capitol building on the night of executions. Two years later LaMarche and his colleagues don’t bother, allowing condemned killers to go to their deaths without benefit of public protest. “It’s the rare human being who can muster the same level of outrage for the 16th execution as for the first,” he says. “The death penalty is a fact of life, if that isn’t an oxymoron. It doesn’t mean that people don’t care—it’s that you have to focus your energies where they make a difference.” Those energies this week will be focused on the U.S. Supreme Court. Once again, carrying the hopes and fears of 1,788 inmates on the nation’s death rows, lawyers from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund will petition the court to strike down the death penalty, this time on grounds it is racially biased. The appeal promises to be the final skirmish of a long, rear-guard legal battle. “This is the last case that has the potential of clearing death row and getting rid of the death penalty,” says Mike Mello, a Florida defense lawyer. For 10 years foes of capital punishment have crafted sweeping appeals to the high court that, if successful, would have undermined dozens of death sentences. But just as regularly the court has rebuffed them, turning back ingenious claims that capital sentences were imposed in a disproportionate manner or that juries were tilted toward conviction by the elimination of potential jurors who expressed doubts about the death penalty. The cases before the court rest on the findings of researchers that killers of whites were much more likely to be condemned than killers of blacks. In a study of 2,484 Georgia homicides between 1973 and 1979, University of Iowa law Prof. David Baldus initially found that killers of whites were 11 times more likely to receive the death sentence. Determined to settle any doubts about the disparity, Baldus took another look at his piles of trial transcripts, appellate briefs, prison files, parole-board records, police reports and other documents. He reanalyzed his numbers to eliminate the statistical impact of cases with aggravating circumstances, such as those in which the murderers had long criminal records or had committed especially heinous deeds. And Baldus still concluded that killers of whites were more than four times more likely to get the death sentence than killers of blacks. Nationwide, 1,713 of the death-row inmates—about 96 percent—were killers of whites; 1,051 are themselves white. Lawyers for Warren McCleskey, a black man who killed a white police officer during a furniture-store robbery in Atlanta, used the Baldus study to appeal his sentence. But one federal court found the study flawed and another held that even if accurate it was not sufficiently compelling to eliminate other explanations for the disparate treatment of the murder defendant. On appeal to the high court, McCleskey’s lawyers will argue that the numbers are so convincing that state prosecutors should be required to explain the apparent disparities. Indeed, McCleskey’s defense lawyer, John Charles Boger, will argue that he wants the numbers treated as they are in other cases where a statistical inference is deemed sufficient for a finding of bias. “Evidence that would amply suffice if the stakes were a job promotion or the selection of a jury should not be disregarded when the stakes are life and death,” Boger says. Mary Beth Westmoreland, Georgia assistant attorney general, contends that the studies are unsound and inadequate. “There are simply too many unique factors relevant to each individual case to allow statistics to be an effective tool in providing intentional discrimination,” she argues. Georgia clearly is the favorite going into the hearing; several justices have been impatient and unsympathetic in recent years with the pace of executions. A companion case from Florida raises a related issue: does a condemned inmate have an automatic right to a hearing on claims of racial discrimination? A study of sentences in eight states, including Florida and Georgia, had shown a pattern similar to that which Baldus found. “The discrimination we found is based on the race of the victim, and it is a remarkably stable and consistent phenomenon,” explains Stanford law Prof. Samuel R. Gross. Winning on the hearing issue would give capital-punishment foes another delaying tactic, but one without much substantive bite if they lose the McCleskey appeal: attorneys would have to show overt acts of racial discrimination by prosecutors or jurors, something that is close to impossible. While the legal issues boil, execution has become a routine matter in a handful of states. “The executions are now back [in the newspapers] with the obituaries, which is where they belong,” says Texas prosecutor Cappy Eads, chairman of the National District Attorneys Association. “There’s less tendency to glamorize the executed defendant and more of a feeling that he got what he deserved.” And the pace is quickening; eight executions already this year in Texas and three others in Florida. But no state can keep up with the fresh supply of condemned inmates, 31 each in Florida and Texas since January, nearly all of whom, if they can find lawyers, will resist in the courts the trip down the Last Mile. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Magazine Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Kacoyanis, Leah 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 Death Row: Last Skirmish Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McDaniel, Ann Pedersen, Daniel Prout, Linda Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Newsweek Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986-10-20 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 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 Washington Houston Miami Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment--America Description An account of the resource A magazine article that discusses capital punishment in America and how lawyers are trying to get rid of it. capital punishment death penalty defense lawyer Gara LaMarche Mike Mello Warren McCleskey https://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://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://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/571ea5a9632db8c671036f98f3cafd88.jpg e2e3b117e416239dad60eb91290d7471 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 David Livingston Funchess, a decorated Viet Nam war veteran, died in Florida's electric chair Tuesday afternoon after Gov. Bob Graham refused him executive clemency and the U.S. Supreme Court denied him a stay of execution. Funchess had originally been scheduled to die at 7 a.m. Tuesday morning but a panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal in Atlanta granted him a five-hour stay so the High Court would have time to rule on the case. The Supreme Court delayed the execution another five hours but voted 7-2 to reject the appeal. Following a two-minute surge of 2,000 volts, Funchess, 39, was pronounced dead at 5[:]11 p.m. He is the 15th man to die in the state's electric chair since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 and the first Viet Nam veteran to be executed in the nation. When asked by prison officials if he wanted to make a last statement to the press, Funchess said "No." Defense attorneys argued the ex-Marine suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder-a recently recognized war-induced mental illness-at the time he was convicted for two 1974 Jacksonville bar murders. In their court appeals and request for executive clemency from the governon, they said PTSD was never mentioned during Funchess' 1975 trial or sentencing. "This man came back from Viet Nam in real bad shape," said Tom Fischer, a member of Veterans for Peace who spent one year in Viet Nam. "That was never considered in court. We're protesting the fact that he was executed without considering that. To ignore it is to ignore him as a human being." Fischer and 30 others gathered for a second time at the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial across from the Old Capitol on Monroe Street for a vigil following the execution Tuesday afternoon. The group had protested the execution earlier at a noon vigil. Fischer told reporters that if the governor or other politicians who were present at the dedication of the war monument last November had respect for those who fought in Viet Nam, they would have reconsidered Funchess' case. "Not long ago, when this (the memorial) was built, Gov. Graham and other politicians stood here and said that it was time to separate the warriors from the war," said Fischer, adding Graham had reneded on that statement by not considering Funchess' Viet Name experiences. "I don't consider Graham a friend of Viet Nam vets." Despite appeals from defense attorneys, Graham refused executive clemency to Funchess Monday. The governor's legal advisor Art Weidinger said the effects of PTSD on the former soldier had already been presented to Graham at his first clemency hearing in 1982. "He (Graham) didn't believe PTSD was a factor in considering clemency," Weidinger said Tuesday. He said Graham feels Funchess' case has been litigated fully in the courts. But Michael Mello, a lawyer for Capital Collateral Review--a state-funded agency that represents indigent Death Row inmates--said the issue at hand was that PTSD had not been presented as mitigating evidence to the jury that tried Funchess for murder in 1975. He said PTSD had not even been recognized as a genuine illness back then, but regardless of that, Funchess' trial lawyers should have included his 1967 tour of Viet Nam as part of the evidence. "That's where it (the evidence) counted," said Mello. "Once you've already been convicted, there's a real inertia to commute the death sentence to life in prison. David's trial lawyer could have done more--the jury could have been told he was a decorated war hero, they could have been told about his childhood. All of that would've been incredible mitigating evidence to the jury even though PTSD had not been diagnosed," Mello said. According to court affidavits, Funchess never committed a crime before going to Viet Name. But he returned from Southeast Asia a drastically changed man. At the late afternoon vigil, people looked at their watches. it was 5:20. "It must be over by now," one woman told another. Others held each other and wept. Still others stared at the color photograph of Funchess in his Marine uniform placed atop a basket of flowers. The group formed a circle in between the two huge granite columns that for the war monument. Rev. Jim Hardison, a coordinator of the death penalty project for Florida IMPACT--an interfaith lobby group for social justice issues--said he was angered not by capital punishment per se but by the way the state administers it. "Again we've taken a poor, penniless, minority person who was mentally ill and executed him," Hardison said. Other present said they felt compelled to speak. "We're really appalled by your callous indifference toward David Funchess," said Linda Reynolds, Director of the Florida Clearinghouse on Criminal Justice, referring to the governor. "Viet Nam veterans will not forget what you've done today.["] "David Funchess was killed twice by society," Reynolds said. "Once in Viet Nam and once today." A United Press International story was used to compile this report. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Vol. No./Issue No. Volume and issue number for the newspaper (if available) Vol. 73, No. 148 Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Daniel, Michael Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Florida kills Viet Nam vet in electric chair Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Basu, Moni Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Florida Flambeau 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 1986-04-22 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Tallahassee, Florida Description An account of the resource David Funchess was the first U.S. Vietnam Vet to be executed by a state. Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpg capital punishment Vietnam veterans https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/eb53d69115247a111d9513d4efd79379.jpg 8f7381b9dccf13fb88439af030acc789 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/52df657ad048a38ec43e525fa089367e.jpg 7f43ec4854cd85124fb4e0a60bdef79e 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 One day early last July, Gregg Thomas of the Tampa branch of the Holland & Knight law firm, flew to Tallahassee to discuss the death appeal case of Jimmy Lee Smith, who was scheduled for execution in 10 days. Those 10 days wound up being filled with hectic activity and Thomas reckons for the last five, he had only five hours sleep. But he and other lawyers, signed up at the last minute and working for free, won a stay which led to a full review of Smith's case before the 11th Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. That review, argued in February, is still pending. Thomas K. Equels, of Greenberg, Trauig, Askew, Hoffman, Lipoff, Rosen & Quentel of Miami, is used to handling complex commercial civil cases. Recently he found himself going door-to-door in a Pompano beach ghetto trying to get new evidence for David Gorham, another death row inmate. Like Thomas and other attorneys working on the Smith case, he was not being paid. But he found an eyewitness who claims that David Gorham did not commit the murder he was convicted and sentenced to death for. Equels is preparing appeals and for a clemency hearing based on the new evidence. Michael Mello, an assistant public defender in Palm Beach County, spends his working days handling criminal appeals for convicted murderers facing the death penalty. He spends his off hours advising civil attorneys who have volunteered to handle capital collateral cases for indigent death row inmates. He recently spent a weekend at his office, while his parents were visiting from Washington D.C., reading a case history and preparing a summary for a volunteer attorney. He has spent considerable time helping lawyers on two separate cases and has given advice on several more cases. All three lawyers are part of the Florida Bar's program to provide pro bono attorneys for indigent death row inmates, especially those facing imminent execution. James C. Rinaman, Jr., of Jacksonville, chairman of the Bar's Special Committee on Representation of Death Sentenced inmates in Collateral Proceedings, said the volunteer attorneys face a difficult, expensive and time consuming job for which they will receive little thanks. But he also said it is a necessary task to uphold the principle that everyone, including death row convicts are entitled to lawyers throughout every step of their appeal and that due process should be accorded everyone. Rinaman estimated the average capital collateral case requires 500 to 1,500 hours of work, and can cost from $10,000 to $18,000 out-of-pocket costs. "The more successful you are, the more time it takes." he said. Lawyers taking the cases can expect little but long hours, high expense and practically no public sympathy for their action, Rinaman said. But the job does have satisfactions. "It's a highlight of their whole professional life." he said. "It's the most important thing they've ever done, all they've done before is represent Continental Can, General Motors or Southeast Bank. This is about the highest professional contribution yo can make." Only about 100 lawyers in Florida are qualified on their own to handle the capital collateral cases, Rinaman said; consequently the Bar program includes providing advisers and research backup, through the Volunteer Lawyers' Resource Center at Florida State University and Stetson University, to help volunteers. Mello, Thomas, and Equels all gave different motives for their involvement. "The ones I've talked to feel it's wrong to kill people without lawyers. It think it's real gross to kill people period." Mello said, adding he jumped at the chance when Palm Beach County Public Defender Richard Jorandby offered him a job handling criminal death appeals. "We supposedly have this system...that;s supposed fair and it isn't . One of the main reason it doesn't work is because of the poverty of people who wind up on death row," he said. "A number of them (volunteer lawyers) who start out don't start as ideologies against the death penalty, but after a few time around. It changes them." One shock to the lawyers, largely used to handling civil cases, is poor treatment in some courts and from prosecutors seeking to hasten the executions, he said. "I feel good about what I do," Mello said. "I can't think of many other areas in life where I do something where I'm this certain I'm on the right side. I think the death penalty is wrong." Mello handles no collateral appeals directly, instead advising the other volunteers, who he noted frequently face a monumental task. "If they take it when a death warrant is signed, it's a huge commitment right up front, it's 18 hours a day for three or four weeks," he said. A memo written by Thomas last summer outlined some of the rigors he and other faced after taking a case only 10 days before the scheduled execution. The attorneys present the first week, including working through the 4th of July, working long days preparing memos and briefs for appeals. The memo noted the lawyers believed they uncovered substantial new arguments and legal points, only yo have their appeals denied at he trial court and federal district court level with only cursory hearings. Thomas noted the attorney team was greatly demoralized before the 11th Federal Circuit Court issued a temporary stay, which was immediately and unsuccessfully appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The stay led to the current hearing. Thomas said Holland & Knight agreed to get involved in the cases to guarantee inmates were represented. "We didn't take the Jimmy Lee Smith case because we're against the death penalty, we took it because a person who was going tot pay the ultimate price deserved to have due process," he said. "I guess we decided as an obligation to the Bar and an obligation to the system of justice that we give some back." He agreed with Mello the death cases vary greatly from the normal civil cases he handles, and that judges can be harsher on lawyers representing capital clients, especially in the lower level of courts. "There's a great deal of emotion involved for a judge trying a death case. The further you are removed from that, the less emotion there is," Thomas said. He added, "The tribulations (of handling a death case) are knowing that someone's life is essentially in your hands and you have to do the very best you can. The reward is when (and if) Jimmy Lee Smith dies, Gregg Thomas and his partners at Holland & Knight will know everything that could be done was done." He also said the work was important because on average 50 percent of the death appeal cases in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals are eventually reversed. Thomas was one of two Holland & Knight attorneys (the other was Julian Clarkson of Tallahassee) along with several law firm clerks who worked on the Jimmy Lee Smith case with Attorney Sarah Bicakley of Tallahassee. Like Thomas, Equels got involved because Greenburg, Taurig decided the firm should help on death appeal cases. But unlike Thomas, Equels, who is working with Alan Dimond and being advised by James McGuirk and Joseph Beeler, became involved early in David Gorham's appeals, well before his clemency hearing and with no death warrant signing in sight. "We're doing it because we have an obligation to the Bar and the community to provide this kind of service to death row inmates needing attorneys," he said. This case took Equeis from his normal civil litigation to knocking on doors in a Pompano Beach ghetto. Noting Gorham's attorney presented no evidence in his trial, Equels said, "We did a pretty thorough investigation and found an eyewitness who said he (Gorham) didn't do it. He entirely deserves representation under those circumstances. "I feel very strongly that he's innocent and I feel very strongly that the worst kind of miscarriage of justice may have taken place." That belief also provides Equels with an extra motive. "If you don't succeed, a man may die who shouldn't die," he said. Besides the appeal work, Equels is also preparing for Gorham's clemency hearing this summer. Despite the intensity of the work, the lawyers said they would be willing to tackle another death row case, but perhaps not right away. "I think I might need at least a year to rest," Equels said with a laugh. Thomas said, "I don't think I would ever have two death cases at one time, but I would do it again because it's (law practice) a system of justice, besides a money making process." They also did not think their pro bono service is highly unusual. Thomas said Holland & knight has a policy that its attorneys should donate 10 percent of their time to free work and community service. Equels and Greenberg, Traurig has a history of pro bono and community work. Rinaman said over half the attorneys in his firm, Marks, Gray, Conroy & Gibbs, do regular pro bono work. "I think the answer is all lawyers do things like this; this happens to be a highly visible one," he said. And quoting 11th Circuit Court Chief Judge John Godbold, Rinaman said that visibility comes with long hours, high expenses and misunderstanding and criticism from the public and even the client. He continued with Godbold's words, "You'll find yourself involved in as difficult and demanding a case as you've ever been in... when its over, you will stand a little taller in your profession." 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/. Description An account of the resource The article describes how when looking to defend a inmate on death row a lawyer could be working around 18 hours a day for three to four weeks. It also alludes to how important it is that these lawyers continue to do this work as 50% of death row decisions are revoked. In order for the American justice system to be as fair and effective lawyers need to defend the men on death row in order to give them a fair chance as many of them face poverty and cannot afford them. Although these lawyers face long hours and arduous work, most find it rewarding and are proud of saving the lives of their fellow man. Title A name given to the resource Working for Free: Lawyers finding death row work demanding Subject The topic of the resource Death row inmates Lawyers Defense (Civil procedure) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Blankenship, Gary Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Florida Bar 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 1985-05-15 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 jpeg 300 dpi Language A language of the resource English death penalty Florida Michael A. Mello https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/7ce55e29fe10a71c17fa2aaf0b1ddc9e.jpg ddce2c6ed0eba93c18a7638b20ee2a88 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 The Florida Bar will lobby for removing judges’ power to override juries to impose death penalties and for appointing all trial judges, as part of its 1986 legislative program. The Bar’s Trial Lawyers Section will also support increasing juror compensation. The Board of Governors delayed a decision on a constitutional amendment to abolish residency requirements for Supreme Court justices. The Board of Governors adopted those positions, among others, at its January 9-10 meeting in Orlando. The proposal to change the state law allowing judges to override jury recommendations of life imprisonment came from the Bar’s Individual Rights and Responsibilities Committee. Committee member Michael Mello said the jury better represents community feelings about a crime and the present law “increases chances innocent people will be executed.” He quoted jurors as saying in some cases, “We thought the state’s evidence was strong enough to convict, but not strong enough to impose the ultimate penalty.” Mello, who works for the state Office of the Capital Collateral Representative, which represents death row inmates, added “For the last 12 years, the [Florida] Supreme court has overruled between two-thirds and three-quarters of the cases involving jury overrides.” The Board approved the position by a 21-7 vote challenge at subsequent elections. The residency requirements were extensively debated, with the Board initially rejecting a recommendation it lobby for the amendment, leaving it without a formal position. But when the Trial Lawyers Section asked permission to lobby for the measure, the Board first voted to oppose the amendment and then defeated a motion to allow the section to lobby for it anyway. The Board finally voted to send the topic back to the Legislation Committee and the Trial Lawyers Section for more study. “I feel on this important issue, we should take more time,” said Orlando Board member Chandler R. Muller, as he moved to send the issue back to the committee. Some Board members argued allowing the Trial Lawyers Section to support the measure even though the Board opposed it would help explain to legislator how the Bar works. But other Board members replied it would only confuse lawmakers and lessen the Bar’s effectiveness. “It’s ridiculous for us to take a position on this Board and allow a section to take a position opposite to that,” Miami Board member Alan T. Dimond said. On other matters the Board: <ul> <li>Approved a Trial Lawyers Section recommendation to support increasing juror compensation from $10 to $25 a day, with the funds coming rom higher filing fees. The Board also approved a section recommendation to draw juror pools from driver license lists as well as voter registration rolls.</li> <li>Approved a Family Law Section an estate by the entirely unless stated differently in the mortgage. The Board also allowed the section to oppose a bill easing commercial mortgage foreclosure restrictions. The section found the bill too broad for the stated purpose of making it simpler to foreclose on some condominium projects.</li> <li>Supported Tax Section requests it be allowed to support several bills, ranging from creating a division of tax policy in the state Department of Revenue to barring tax collectors from enforcing any but good faith payments until property tax disputes are resolved.</li> <li>Approved allowing the Trial Lawyers Section to lobby in Congres against federal products liability legislation.</li> <li>Failed, by a 15-12 vote, to support a proposed ABA recommendation calling for a federal intercircuit panel to resolve disputes between federal circuit courts without a Supreme Court appeal. A two-thirds Board vote is required to approve such a legislative position. The Board also took no position on creation of a chief administrative judge for the federal system. Both the intercircuit panel and administrative judge have been sought by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger and will be considered by the ABA at its midyear meeting. The Board will again consider legislative positions, including the controversial proposed modification of the Marketable Record Title Act (see related story elsewhere in the News) at its March 19-22 meeting in Tampa. Also on the agenda will be Bar responses to proposed state legislation to change the tort system, including the modification or repeal of joint and several liability. </li> </ul> 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 Bar favors eliminating judicial death penalty override Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Florida Bar News Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986-02-01 Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Blankenship, Gary Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment--Florida. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 jpg 300 dpi https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/3a3f2ab371efbcedbda1e75cd2d2c6e7.jpg 246468f71fe289b3e61bba4dd82d4872 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/15d49b05601869d9675647119a429750.jpg 4c0692b85fc295492882908ee7f79cff 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 A jury's recent verdict acquitting four Los Angeles police officers of using excessive force on a black motorist has drawn a mixed reaction from local police and attorneys. All those interviewed agreed that if one were to judge the men by the infamous videotape, then they were guilty. But some of those interviewed said they did not know what other evidence was presented court, and believed that the jury system should be supported. I'll was not sitting on a jury for seven weeks. All I saw was 83 seconds of a tape," Woodstock Police Chief Byron Kelly said. But, judging from the videotape, Kelly said, "I would have thought they were guilty." Woodstock Attorney Tom Zonay agreed. A former police officer, Zonay believes the officers used excessive force against Rodney King. On the other hand, Zonay said that from the perspective of an attorney, he was obliged to respect the jury's decision. "I am a believer that you have to respect the system and the system sometimes makes decisions that many people are not pleased with," Zonay said. Slate Police Lt, Bruce Lang said this week that "All of us are shocked at the verdict" Lang said the verdict "sends a signal to the public that police officers can get away with that activity. There was no excuse for that." An all-white jury last week acquitted the officers of beating King in March 1991 following a high-speed chase. An amateur videotape of the beating was shown on television stations across the nation, creating an outcry over the tactics police used to subdue King. The verdict led to an orgy of rioting and looting in Los Angeles last week, resulting in the deaths of 58 people. Demonstrations were held in other cities across the United States. These demonstrations sometimes turned into in riots. Locally, a demonstration was staged by students at Dartmouth College. Michael Mello, a criminal law professor at the Vermont Law School, said the verdict was the result of the trial's location being moved from Los Angeles to Simi Valley. While Mello agreed with changing the trial's location, he said Simi Valley was' a poor choice because of its overwhelmingly white population. He said the jury should have been picked from an ethnically diverse area. Mello said the population of Simi was comprised of middle class whites who had fled Los Angeles. The jurors, according to Mello, were more inclined to believe a police officer than a victim of police brutality. Mello cases with the media. In this instance, however, Mello said "This verdict sickened me as a lawyer and as a citizen." Lang, said he too, was surprised that an all-white jury had been picked to decide the case. "I just don't understand that, especially in an area like Southern California," Lang said. Lang has been a police officer in Vermont for 15 years. In that time, he said he has never seen a single case of police using excessive force against anyone. As commander of the Bethel Barracks for the past five years, Lang has only received one complaint about an officer using excessive force to apprehend a suspect. Lang said the person who made the complaint was not the defendant in the case. Lang investigated the complaint and found that the officer was justified in using his nightstick to apprehend the suspect. Lang added that Vermont Slate troopers are taught never to strike defendants above the shoulders. U.S. Rep. Bernard Sanders criticized the 11-year Reagan- Bush presidential "reign" as the underlying cause behind the riots that resulted from the verdict. "During the same period as' the rich were getting richer, lower-income black workers saw their wages drop by 50 percent. The percentage of qualified his statements, saying that besides the videotape, he did not know what other evidence was presented to the jurors. For this reason, Mello said, he usually declines to discuss African-American fathers who did not earn enough at their jobs to keep their families out of poverty jumped from 25 to 40 percent,” Sanders said. He called for a “fundamental change in national priorities. 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 Verdict shocks Cops, Lawyers Subject The topic of the resource Police brutality--United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brown, Julian P. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 JPGs 300 dpi Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Florida Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-05-07 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Vermont Standard Description An account of the resource A recent verdict has acquitted four Los Angeles police officers for using excessive force on a black motorist. This verdict has drawn a mixed reaction from local police and attorneys. https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/224480f62d56f5fc96230d320016dcf2.jpg 42f3b1ac17fa930b605e1a279f45ef42 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/85d2cf1352f81834b2c7ff20d8b08fee.jpg 810a54f615ba27aca8883eb2eb3e333d 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 Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Burrows, Courtney Text Any textual data included in the document The U.S. Supreme Court rejects a key challenge to capital punishment. In Illinois last week, 105 inmates sat on death row, only one facing a likely execution before 1989. In California, 171 killers waited to walk the Last Mile, but only one is close to going to the gas chamber this year. In Florida, the nation’s largest colony of the condemned held 268; none had a set appointment to die. And even in Texas, where capital punishment has been used most often recently, 250 convicted murderers were just marking time in their cells: the state averages but one execution a month. After 11 years of work, lawyers, courts, and killers have managed to create a system of capital punishment that satisfies no one. Proponents write stern statutes, win convictions and then watch the expanding gridlock on death row. Abolitionists anguish over public opinion and unyielding laws yet succeed in blocking most executions because of flaws in the state’s case or procedures. Families of victims have neither peace nor vengeance; killers, no certain punishment; justice, no resolution. This erratic system appears certain to continue staggering on for at least a few more years despite a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision last week. By a 5-4 vote, the justices rejected a challenge by condemned killer Warren McCleskey to Georgia’s death-penalty practices. McClesky, a black man who killed a white cop, based his claim on a statistical finding that in Georgia, killers of whites were four times more likely to be sentenced to die than killers of blacks. The argument had broad implications: three quarters of the 1,874 inmates on death rows nationally killed whites, so a decision for McCleskey could have arguable barred most executions for the rest of the decade. Writing for the majority, Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. concluded that McCleskey’s numbers alone did not prove enough to validate Georgia’s death penalty. While acknowledging that the statistics “indicate a discrepancy that appears to correlate with race,” McCleskey had no clear evidence that he was a victim of racial bias. “Apparent disparities in sentencing are an inevitable part of our criminal justice system,” Powell wrote. “Despite these imperfections our consistent rule has been that constitutional guarantees are met” with procedural “safeguards” that make trials “as fair as possible.” Tired of the pleas to strike down the death penalty, Powell pointedly invited opponents to bring their statistical arguments to the state legislatures-and not judges. The dissenting opinions by four justices- William J. Brennan Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Harry A. Blackmun and John Paul Stevens- were significant for two reasons. First, there was the expected debate with the majority over the case itself, with the dissenters insisting that McCleskey’s evidence was stronger than the court had required in other cases. “Surely,” declared Brennan, “we should not be willing to take a person’s life if the chance that his death sentence was irrationally imposed is more likely than not.” Blood bath: Second, and symbolically important, the four justices held that the capital-punishment system appeared impermissibly stained by racial bias. The process, concluded Brennan, “reflects a devaluation of the lives of black persons.” That’s an unusually powerful statement, and one that could echo in later cases. The decision but McCleskey and a handful of other inmates-mostly in Texas-in immediate peril. An execution date for McCleskey may be set within the next month, with a few others to follow. “Everybody was really waiting for this case,” says a Georgia Department of Corrections spokesman, John Siler. “We even had one stay of execution for a white guy with a white victim.” But if the wait is over, neither side is predicting an imminent blood bath. Instead, most experts predict a gradual increase in executions-one much slower than the population explosion on death row-and a shift in the legal fight from broad challenges like McCleskey’s to case-by-case combat. More pleas: On the same day as the McCleskey decision, the justices themselves showed they were open to minimalist approach. In a Florida case, they unanimously ruled that a trail judge had improperly prevented killer James Ernest Hitchcock from pleading “mitigating circumstances” to the jury. There was no question of Hitchcock’s guilt. He was sentenced 11 years ago, but now he will wait for a new sentencing hearing in front of a jury and, even if he loses, he will be entitled to another round of appeals. Two dozen other death-row inmates will piggyback on Hitchcock’s success and will likely ask for new hearings as well. But that victory came too late for Ronald Straight. Lawyer Michael Mello, who spent several years in Florida specializing in death-penalty cases, last year tried to postpone Straight’s execution by arguing a claim similar to Hitchcock’s. Mello lost. “I had an awful time getting to sleep last night thinking about Ronald Straight,” Mello said last week. “It’s exactly what’s wrong with the death penalty.” Straight could have won a hearing under last week’s ruling. “Now he’s dead.” The increased emphasis on individual appeals will put more pressure on one of the weakest links in the system: the shortage of lawyers to handle the appeals. Their efforts are not frivolous foot dragging; according to Columbia University law professor Jack Greenberg, a leader of the anti-death-penalty movement, courts reversed about 45 percent of the death sentences they reviewed between 1982 and 1985. Many of those cases were handled by legal-aid or volunteer lawyers. But the burden is considerable: a survey by Boston lawyer Bob Spangenberg found that a lawyer devotes 2,000 hours and spends $30,000 out of pocket on an average appeal. Groups like the American Bar Association are trying to attract new recruits and encourage states to support such appellate work. And courts are beginning to worry about the quality of the lawyers handling death-row appeals. A federal appeals panel in Florida and a federal trial judge in Virginia have sharply criticized the haphazard quality of the volunteer systems. On capital punishment, no problem ever seems to be fully addressed. Already, strategists are looking for ways to differentiate their appeals from McCleskey’s. In a Utah case, for instance, lawyer Timothy Ford wants to present evidence of discrimination based on the defendants race rather than that of the victim, since blacks and Hispanics make up a disproportionate percent of the population on death row (chart). And in California, lawyers are discussing whether a McCleskey-style case might work as a state constitutional claim, a long shot given the appointments to the bench by conservative Gov. George Deukmejian. “Surely there will be other issues, some we have not dreamed of,” says Steve White, California’s chief assistant attorney general. In the meantime, a flawed system will continue to blunder along. 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 Gridlock on Death Row Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Newsweek Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1987-05-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 JPGs 300 DPI Subject The topic of the resource Death row Supreme Court decisions--2000 Capital punishment--Cases Description An account of the resource This Newsweek article uses the failed death row appeal of Warren McClesky by the Supreme Court to bring up complicated issues surrounding capital punishment. Writers argue that the Supreme Court and most in the legal system admit there is racial bias involved when giving someone the death penalty. Even when people are on death row, they rarely are killed immediately or at all. The writers argue that amending the death penalty involves a complex case-by-case process that faces challenges of racial discrimination and lack of appeal lawyers. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McDaniel, Ann Calonius, Erik Raine, George Smith, Vern Murr, Andrew Shapiro, Daniel 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 United States appeal lawyers appeals capital punishment Death Row Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. lawyers McCleskey Michael Mello racial bias racial discrimnation Supreme Court https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/5fe4ea7bd534b6bde57c15ed3cd63a9e.jpg 4b06102c8dd40898dd3ad057257f67c5 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/20bf2d566faeb61a3ad42ac5b89b641c.jpg b880fe8945e78a1c12f7f15e7e139547 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 Two state prosecutors have dusted off an old tool -- the grand jury -- to help them determine whether homicide charges should be filed in five recent cases. Some see the grand jury as a rubber stamp for a prosecutor who wants to justify a charge. Others see it as a way for prosecutors to tap community sentiment in deciding standards of conduct. Either way both State’s Attorneys William Sorrell in Chittenden County and Howard Vanbenthuysen in Franklin county say they won’t hesitate to use grand juries again. Sorrell used it four times in recent weeks. The results: one indictment for first-degree murder; four indictments for manslaughter, and one finding of justifiable homicide. VanBenthuysen used it last week to obtain a manslaughter indictment. Supporters if the system say grand juries give prosecutors an independent sounding board on the validity of charges. The process allows for review by a neutral party of cases that could be seen as politically motivated or sensitive. While a deputy prosecutor, VanBenthuysen helped in a 1985 Franklin county grand jury that reviewed alleged police misconduct. Critics contend that a prosecutor can lead a grand jury to an intended conclusion. No judge is present when a grand jury convenes, and prosecutors may present what information they choose. Robert Andres, who represents a Burlington man indicted by a grand jury, last week was critical of Sorrell for spending time and money to seek the three manslaughter indictments when the State’s Attorney’s Office had authority to file the charges. Grand jurors are paid $30 per day and 25 cents per mile for their services -- the rate of pay for a trial juror. Others note grand juries have enormous power because they may subpoena additional witnesses and start investigations into new cases. Grand jurors, unlike jurors at trials, may ask questions during the closed-door sessions. Defense lawyer Peter Langrock, who served on an American Bar Association grand jury reform committee, said the intent of the grand jury was good. “Historically grand juries were meant to act as a buffer between the … prosecutors and the rights of the individual,” Langrock said/ “As of late they have turned out not to fulfill that function but to be a mere tool of the prosecution.” He said the system is difficult for defendants because a lawyer is not allowed at the hearing. “If you’re representing somebody who’s subpoenaed … as a target you have to make a choice whether to let them go in on their own or refuse to let them testify. Neither solution is a very good one,” Langrock said. Langrock refused grand jury testimony by his client Robert Bizon of Clarendon, who was charged in the shooting death of a teen-ager Bizon caught in his garage. The grand jury indicted Bizon, but he was found innocent Thursday in Rutland Superior court. Abuses seen elsewhere Professor Michael Mello of the Vermont Law School said he has seen grand jury abuses in Florida while a public defender and in Washington, D.C., as a private lawyer. Since arriving in Vermont, however, he said he has been impressed by what appears to be the independence of Vermonters serving on grand juries. “My neighbors would not be swayed by a prosecutor,” said Mello, who noted indictments do not appear to be automatic in Vermont. Burlington attorney Norm lais knows what Mello means. After a grand jury refused to issue an indictment in October for a homicide, Blais praised Sorrell for his handling of the case. Burlington lawyer Jerome F. O’Neill, who worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for 8 ½ years, said indictments are not automatic, even in the federal system. He said he could recall at least two cases where the government thought an indictment was worthy, but the grand jurors refused to indict. VanBenthuysen said it makes little sense for a prosecutor to manipulate the grand jury. If a conviction cannot be obtained, why bring an indictment? He asked. A grand jury in state court normally consists of 18 to 23 residents from the county where an alleged crime occurred. At least 12 have to agree on any decision. A grand jury decides whether charges should be brought after hearing sworn testimony behind closed doors. It may determine how serious the charge will be -- first-degree murder, second-degree murder, or manslaughter. Thomas Lehner, the Vermont Court administrator, said the grand jury is still in use in some states, but many abandoned the system because of abuses in the 1940s and ‘50s. In Vermont, grand juries fell into disuse years ago The last to go were those concerning homicides; They disappeared a dozen years ago. The grand jury was created in the United States with the ratification if the Fifth amendment 200 years ago this month. Grand juries were important in Vermont’s early days because state’s attorneys weren’t always lawyers, according to Albert Barney, retired chief justice of the Vermont Supreme Court. The grand jurors saw themselves as having equal power, Barney said. Other values O’neill said there is a positive side-effect to grand juries. He said he found that grand jurors came away with a better understanding and a deeper appreciation for the criminal justice system. “They also get an understanding about the extent of crime in Vermont,” O’Neill said. The grand jury provides a valuable way to obtain or preserve testimony. “It was a very legitimate way to obtain testimony from those who did want to testify,” O’Neill said. He said witnesses may be subpoenaed if they refuse to speak to investigators. The testimony is provided under oath, thus exposing the witnesses to a perjury charge if they lie. O’Neill said the grand jurors can tell you if you have a problem or a hole in your case. Jurors take on homicides The grand jury actions in Vermont Superior Court during the past three months include -Sept. 12: A first-degree murder charge against Rebecca S. Durenleau, 39, of Franklin. She is accused of aiding a boyfriend in the killing of her husband outside an Essex Junction bar. She allegedly assisted Harmon Olmstead by setting up Michael Durenleau to be killed July 12, 1985, outside Veronica's Tavern on Park Street. -Oct. 1: An involuntary manslaughter charge against Rebecca Anne Emmons, 18, of Burlington in the May death of her 11 1/2 -month-old baby. Scot A. Bombard Jr. died in the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont for a head injury. -Oct. 30: A ruling of justifiable homicide in the June 15 fatal shooting of John Darling, 20, said he shot his older brother by accident. He said he was trying to protect his 14-year-old brother, Joel, from John Darling. The jury voted 15-5 that it was not a criminal act. -Dec. 4: Three involuntary manslaughter charges against Stephen Converse Brooks, 37, of Pearl Street in connection with the carbon monoxide poisoning of three people at his former home in December 1988. The indictment came less than a week before the statute of limitations would have expired. A pregnant woman, Linda Cifarelli, 26, her husband, John, 34, and their daughter, Nina, 23 months, were found dead in the house Dec. 10, 1988. -Dec. 5: An involuntary manslaughter charge against Brain Draper, 1, of Highgate for the Oct. 17 fatal shooting of a Franklin County farmhand. Michael Pigeon, 16, was shot in the head at the farm off Tarte Road in Highgate. 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. Goad, Samuel 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 Grand Jury Sees Action Description An account of the resource In recent months, the court system in the state of Vermont has seen a revival of the Grand jury. While the practice of calling for a Grand jury is legitimate, some question whether affording the prosecution such a powerful tool to indict does not overstep the boundaries of prosecutorial misconduct. Several lawyers, officers, and experts argue the implications of this new wave of Grand jury indictments. 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 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Burlington, VT Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Donoghue, Mike Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Burlington Free Press Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1991-08-12 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 JPGs 300 DPI Subject The topic of the resource Grand jury--United States Legal aid Prosecutorial misconduct https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/03c551bb5b75ad8c73713d9d94a89dd1.jpg 5493d1f878d21519e97dd88f46f8b2bb https://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://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/9673bb57072622209461797ee03ab40d.jpg e8f50edc45e660aa1fd81170b90ad97f https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/68df457b36014a2f02f30c5810e8e09e.jpg 1cd43411217c07114149f6d7b410ac09 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/a0286f09949f613d43e7ae6b27b4706e.jpg 57b610ebe113b0cf8f1732aecbd1c2aa 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 In a first-degree murder case, when a judge and a jury don’t see eye-to-eye on the sentence, as has occurred at least five times in the last seven years in Escambia County, the judge gets the last word. In four local cases, judges overrode jury recommendations for life in prison and imposed the death penalty, deciding that aggravating circumstances outweighed mitigating circumstances. And in one case, a judge overrode a jury recommendation for the death penalty and imposed a life sentence. It’s a system that Chief Escambia Circuit Judge M.C. Blanchard would like to see changed: He’s in favor of proposed legislation that would require judges to follow jury recommendations for life sentences but would allow them to override jury recommendations for death. “It would help a great deal in keeping our death penalty constitutional.” He said, adding that the jury should have access to the same pre-sentence information – currently, some of it is confidential – that the judge has in determining the sentence. Here’s a rundown of the five local cases: In 1978, Judge George Lowrey ignored a jury’s advice and sentenced to death Thomas McCampbell, convicted in the murder of Winn-Dixie security guard Buddy Ray. The Florida Supreme Court later upheld the conviction but reversed the death sentence. In 1979, Judge William Frye overruled a jury recommendation for a life sentence and imposed the death penalty on Marvin Edwin Johnson, Convicted in the killing of Warrington pharmacist Woodrow Moulton. The Florida Supreme Court upheld the conviction and sentence, and Johnson is on death row. In 1980, in a rare reverse decision, Frye overrode a jury recommendation for death and sentenced Edward Clifton Cleveland to life in prison for murdering a 15-year-old runaway girl and then dismembering her body and placing some parts in sealed garbage bags. In 1983, Judge Joseph Tarbuck overrode a jury recommendation for life and sentenced to death Anthony Brown, accused in the murder of Veteran’s Gas Co. delivery man James Dasinger. Three weeks ago, after a retrial won on a technicality, Brown was acquitted, the result of the star prosecution witness flip-flopping on his testimony. Also in 1983, Judge William Rowlet overrode a jury’s recommendation and sentenced to death William Eutzy, convicted in the murder of West Hill Taxi Stand driver Herman Hughley. The Florida Supreme Court upheld that conviction, and Eutzy is on death row. Exactly what goes through a jury’s mind during its secret proceedings is difficult to determine; by contrast, judges are required by law to provide a written explanation for imposition of the death penalty. What follows is a look back at the Johnson and Brown cases. In court testimony, Warrington Pharmacy employee Gary Summitt, an eyewitness, gave this account of Marvin Johnson’s armed robbery and murder of Woodrow MoultonL Summitt went to the back of the store to as Moulton a question and found Johnson holding a gun on Moulton and ordering him to fill a bag with drugs and money. After obtaining what he wanted, Johnson started toward the front of the store, and Moulton grabbed a gun from behind the prescription counter. There was an exchange of gunfire, with Moulton firing at Johnson until his gun was emptied. No longer able to defend himself, Moulton stood up with his hands in the air. Johnson walked to within a foot and a half of him, said, “You think you’re a smart son-of-a-bitch, don’t you?”, shot him in the chest and fled. The jury after finding Johnson guilty, recommended that Judge Frye impose a life sentence. Instead, Frye sentenced Johnson to death, a decision that was upheld in a split decision by the Florida Supreme Court. Interviews last week with jurors indicate some were pleased with Frye’s decision and others were not. “I didn’t want to have a guilty conscience, even though I thought he deserved death,” said Rugby Watford. “I was glad the judge did what he did.” “I just don’t believe you can (sentence him to death) on one witness,” said Doroth Grissom. “I said maybe he did it. We really didn’t feel he deserved that chair.” “One of the questionsthey asked the jurors was whether we could impose the death sentence, and we all said yes then when it was time to decide, a lot of the jurors said their religious beliefs wouldn’t let them vote for the death penalty,” said Constance Fletcher. “To me, that’s an obstruction of justice. I was really upset. I was so happy when the judge overruled us.” “(Johnson) went in with the intention of getting drugs, not with the intention of shooting (Moulton),” said Pearl Middlecoff. “If Moulton hadn’t shot at him, he would be alive today . . . I put myself in (Johnson’s) position. I probably would have done the same thing. I think the judge was very much out of place.” Frye, who had found five aggravating factors and no mitigating factors, said he has no second thoughts about his decision. “Moulton was out of ammunition and holding up hs hands. Point-blank, 2 or 3 feet away, he fired right through his heart. That was a cold-blooded murder,” he said. In the Supreme Court appeal, four justices concurred with Frye that “death is the appropriate sentence to be imposed for this atrocious and cruel execution murder committed during the commission of an armed robbery by an escaped convict who previously had been convicted of felonies involving the use of threat or violence.” Three justices dissented, saying that “the fusillade of pistol shots initiated by the victim and the apparent conscious act of the appellant to spare the two other occupants of the premises from kidnapping or murder support a reasoned judgment by the jury in favor of a life sentence.” Frye pointed out that in the Cleveland case, he overrode the jury in the opposite direction because the case law prevented him from considering that the body was cut into pieces after death. “I knew it was a risky thing to do in a political sense,” he said, “but I could not sentence that man to death knowing it was against the law . . . The jury (got) all inflamed because it was so gruesome.” The case against Anthony Brown, accused in the first-degree murder of Veteran’s Gas Co. deliveryman James Dasinger, rested largely on the testimony of co-defendant Wyndell Rogers, who pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree murder in exchange for his testimony. During the first trial, Rogers said Brown set up Dasinger to make a delivery in a sparsely populated area of Cantoment and then killed him with a shotgun blast to the chest. The jury found Brown guilty and recommended a life sentence; but Judge Tarbuck, finding the four aggravating factors, sentenced him to death. On a reversal unrelated to his sentence, the Florida Supreme Court granted Brown a new trial. And at that trial, after Rogers recanted his testimony and said Brown was not even present when Dasinger was killed, a jury found him innocent. “That’s a lesson that a judge should never impose the death penalty on the basis of one person’s testimony,” said Micheal Mello, a Tallahassee attorney who has handled several death override appeals. “It sends shivers up my spine.” Bob Dennis, Brown’s defense attorney at the first trial, agrees. “I don’t think a person should be sentenced to death unless the evidence is absolutely clear, unless there’s a smoking gun,” he said. 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 Escambia Cases Show Examples Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Graybiel, Ginny Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived News Journal Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment Description An account of the resource News article describing the death penalty, judicial override, and examples from past cases that had examples of these issues. 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 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 3 JPG death penalty Florida Supreme Court Judicial Override https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/af51f244efea02e72873386d4af6458a.jpg b2f4aa19320ba9185a1f34b8ca0ef6c6 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/260e3ed6d498cea5c0e334c1b07d0fa7.jpg 04cae11e9289139d9ef8332b708a11d1 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 Hartford – When Windsor County State’s Attorney Patricia Zimmerman decided not to prosecute a high-profile unlawful trespass case last month, she said her decision was made “in deference to the privacy rights of the witnesses.” The fact that some of the witnesses in the case were lesbians influenced her decision, she said. Was her reasoning legitimate? Legal? Unprecedented? Yes, yes and no, legal and police experts say. “She is well within statutory authority to make that decision,” said Tom Torti, executive director of the Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs. “The privacy rights of an individual is as legitimate a reason for not bringing a case as is any other reason.” Two police officers interviewed for this story said they had occasionally heard privacy rights of victims and witnesses cited as reasons not to prosecute in cases that involve children or allegations of aggravated sexual assault. State’s attorneys have a remarkable degree of latitude in deciding whether to prosecute a case, and they needn’t explain their reasons either, said professor Michael Mello of Vermont Law School in South Royalton. The seemingly simple question of “Was the law broken?”is complicated by a number of other factors. Can the state prove its case? Does the alleged lawbreaker endanger the public safety? Given state budget cuts, is prosecution the best use of limited staff resources? What is the severity of the charge, and is prosecution worth the effort? “Having ongoing relationships with not just the police, but the public in general are legitimate factors that oftentimes come into the charging equation,” Mello said. “The wants and needs of the victims as well as the wants and needs of third parties, especially, in this case, of innocent witnesses,” he said, explaining that his information about this case comes from news accounts. “At least as told by the Valley News . . . this may not have been your everyday, normal trespass case,” Mello said. “If sexual orientation was an issue or potential issue in the trial, given the general homophobic nature of U.S. culture, (non-prosecution) makes sense to me.” Although a reluctant witness can be compelled by the court to testify, such a witness may be hostile and unhelpful, Torti said. The unlawful trespass charge stemmed from an evening last December when Georgina Forbes of Thetford and Susan Aranoff of Randolph went to the Howard Johnson’s junction with a group of (Continued on page 5) – DECISION friends, one of whom, a 39-year-old woman, lacked identification. Aranoff and Forbes unsuccessfully tried to persuade the bartender to let the woman in. Hartford police – five of them – were called to settle the ensuing dispute. During the subsequent arrest, Aranoff said she was shoved savagely to the floor. Aranoff and Forbes claim they were discriminated against by the bar because some in their party were lesbians. The bar denies it. The women further say the police acted unreasonably and violently during the arrest, accusations the police have consistently denied. Zimmerman sided with the police in her statement announcing her decision not to prosecute. “The Hartford Police Department acted appropriately and according to protocol,” she wrote, adding that prosecution would not serve the public good. She said yesterday that she stands by her decision. Mello analyzed Zimmerman’s decision thus: “The police are vindicated and the folks who are arrested are vindicated. At least on its face, it’s a compromise that I think had the political benefit of giving the various constituencies some of what they wanted, maybe not all. Politically, she was probably in a no-win situation.” Only one of the police officers involved in the incident could be reached for comment. Patrlman David Hedley said he was neither frustrated by nor triumphant about the case’s outcome. “If I were to get upset about all the cases that don’t get what I think they should get, I’d go nutty,” he said. “As soon as it’s out of my hands, I try to forget about it. “I don’t see that there is vindication involved,” he continued. “I just see that the truth came out. The facts were investigated by an independent body and it led to everything that my department has asserted in the first place. “I’ve been in law enforcement close to 11 years. I know the level of my conduct and am satisfied with my conduct. I don’t worry about what anybody else says, what the press says, what the victims say. I know I guided myself in a proper manner and according to our guidelines and regulations.” But if that arresting officer wasn’t frustrated, at least one former police officer was. In a letter to the Valley News, Hartford resident Frank Dupree implied that Zimmerman was pressured by a special interest group to back down. Tom Nelson, past president of the Vermont Police Association, who read about the case in the media, said it “popped” into his mind that “political” considerations might have influenced Zimmerman’s decision. “Most people don’t want for political groups to affect the courts’ work,” Nelson said. “The court should be looking for the truth. The issue should basically be the incident that occurred and the laws that were broken.” But Torti dismissed the notion that politics might have played a role. “Pat (Zimmerman) has a reputation in the state for being a very tough prosecutor. If you look at her record as a prosecutor and as a state’s attorney, clearly she hasn’t shied away from tough cases,” he said. Aranoff, who is an attorney, said she doesn’t accept Zimmerman’s stated reason for not pursuing the case, although she was glad that the charge was dropped. Aranoff said that the lesbian witnesses are her friends and she knows they weren’t concerned about their privacy. Aranoff, who is lesbian, speculated that Zimmerman wanted to show her sensitivity to the gay community by raising the privacy rights issue because she realized that otherwise her support for the police would be interpreted as insensitivity to homosexuals. “I think the state’s attorney was looking for a way out but the reason given doesn’t fly,” Aranoff said. Zimmerman said yesterday that wile some witnesses didn’t necessarily have a problem testifying, “it’s a matter of what collateral effect that process might have.” She declined to comment on Dupree’s letter, saying he is entitled to his opinion and that it was based solely on news accounts. 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 Zimmerman's Decision Not Groundbreaking Subject The topic of the resource Gay rights Discrimination Homophobia Description An account of the resource Windsor County State's Attorney Patricia Zimmerman dropped a case that involved prosecuting a group charged with trespassing after having been denied entrance into bar because of the sexual orientation of their party. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gutkowski, Sophia 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 1992-04-14 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 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 Windsor County, Vermont Court decisions and opinions. Gay and lesbian studies. Privacy--United States. Windsor County (Vt.). County Court https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/c20f9710978228eb79bb145aa4bbfe0e.jpg 03e70ce54f317559ac26b0a0e871f89e 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 [image] END OF THE LINE: Los Angeles police form a line to prevent a crowd from going into a building Thursday. National Guard troops moved in Thursday to seize control of neighborhoods torn by riots. [image] LOOTING SUSPECTS: Police stand over handcuffed looting suspects in Los Angeles on Thursday. Looters plundered businesses and torched buildings in brazen daytime assaults. SOUTH ROYALTON --- Convicting a police officer of a crime is a hard thing for a jury to do, Vermont Law School professor Michael Mello said Thursday. But Mello, who teaches criminal procedure and said he specializes in “the general issue of regulating police behavior,” was nonetheless surprised Wednesday when a jury found four Los Angeles Police officers innocent of charges in the beating of motorist Rodney King. “I was stunned by the verdict,” Mello said Thursday. “My jaw just dropped. When I had heard earlier that they were deadlocked on all counts but one, I had assumed that they were ready to convict.” Mello’s personal reaction to the jury’s decision was tempered, though, with a professorial view of the jury’s job. “You need to be careful about trashing the jury’s verdict without knowing what they had in front of them,” he said. “They had a responsibility to view the evidence, listen to witnesses and then make judgements about the credibility of what they see and hear. “On the other hand, you had an all white jury making those credibility judgements.” Rodney King is black. The four officers charged in his beating are white. Police on trial, Mello said, begin with a built-in advantage. “Juries identify with cops,” he said. “They tend not to identify with the victims of police brutality, especially in the case of someone who is not clearly an innocent victim.” 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. Lindsey, Megan 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 Verdict 'stuns' Vt. law professor Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hacker, Tom Subject The topic of the resource Verdicts King, Rodney Description An account of the resource Michael Mello gives his thoughts on the jury’s verdict of the Los Angeles police officers who beat Rodney King, who were found innocent. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Tom Hacker, “Verdict 'stuns' Vt. law professor,” HIST298, https://hist299.umwhistory.org/admin/items/show/142. 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 1992-05-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 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 Los Angeles, CA 1992 Los Angeles Los Angeles Police Rodney King Verdict Vermont https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/ecb3e4206a206ec6691686041f5d5c6d.jpg 93d57f16684fb90860baed8db58fb00d https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/a7048b74d1a27cea2070b3dae4c4be5e.jpg af89533815566d073a7e373eef47ab19 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/5768f5b9a65e75714244615ea798d467.jpg 6c66fe2d2cf8b763a271ab81d086ea2e https://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://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/91cd38cf4d7feb29cedd17be8f290617.jpg f364e1fc7434d9f01c680081e9b7c334 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 Execution still on, judge says Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/d56f6bbcf41117ce287882b584bd26d2.jpg 781f0c8804b813682a5978d97c605e14 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 Calling the appeal “a gross abuse” of the legal system, a federal judge Tuesday refused to postpone the execution of convicted police killer Alvin Bernard Ford, scheduled to die Thursday in the state’s electric chair. Meanwhile, a divided Florida Supreme Court blocked the scheduled execution of John O’Callaghan by a 4-3 vote an hour after hearing arguments in the condemned inmate’s mercy appeal. His execution was also scheduled for Thursday. Attorneys for Ford, anticipating the ruling against their client, filed an appeal to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal in Atlanta before U.S. District Judge Norman C. Roettger even announced his decision in West Palm Beach. “Time is at a premium,” said Michal Mello, one of Ford’s three attorneys. The 31-year-old Ford, who has exhausted more appeals than any other Death Row inmate, will die at 7 a.m. Thursday at Florida State Prison in Starke unless the appeal court or the U.S. Supreme Court finds a reason to delay the execution. Ford was convicted of shooting to death Fort Lauderdale police officer Dmitri Walter Ilyankoff during a bungled restaurant robbery in 1974. The Florida Supreme Court upheld his sentence five years later. In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court denied his appeal. Gov. Bob Graham signed his first death warrant in 1981. A month later – and 14 hours before he was to be electrocuted – the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal granted a postponement. The court dissolved the stay 13 months later. In April, Graham again signed Ford’s death warrant. The state Supreme court denied a stay May 25. Roettger used strong words Tuesday to express his irritation with Ford’s latest appeal, which was based on his attorneys’ belief that Ford is now insane. “This is absolutely a classic pattern of a defendant allegedly having a mental problem and perceiving a rook card in this possession… and holding it in the vest pocket until the last possible minute,” Roettger said. Richard Burr III, along with Mello, tried to convince the judge that Ford should be examined by psychiatrists and the results presented in court. In the past two years, Ford has gradually developed severe paranoid delusions, Burr said. He became obsessed that the Ku Klux Klan was keeping his family hostage, and torturing then, in a “pipe alley” near his cell. He now believes that he is a member of the Klan, that he personally has overturned the death penalty and is staying in prison only because he wants to, Burr said. Florida law – and the U.S. Constitution, Mello argued – prohibit the execution of an insane person. Burr and Mello contended that Ford’s sanity never has been formally determined in court. Joy Shearer, an assistant state attorney general, disagreed. “A determination of sanity has been made, and properly so, by the governor,” she said. Last December, Graham appointed a panel of three psychiatrists to examine Ford to determine if he understood the death penalty and why he had been sentenced to die. They found he did. One doctor called Ford’s delusions “contrived and recently learned.” But Burr and Mello said the decision by the panel of psychiatrists didn’t constitute a true judicial hearing. Judge Roettger, who also denied an execution stay for Ford in 1981, chastised the attorneys repeatedly for waiting until “the very last, frantic minute” to raise the issue of Ford’s sanity. “This has got to be a gross abuse of the system,” he said. After the two-and-a-half-hour hearing, Mello denied that he and Burr had “sandbagged” the case. “We filed absolutely as soon as possible. If the claim would have been ripe before, we would have filed it then,” he said. O’Callaghan, 38, was under a death warrant for the Aug. 20, 1980 killing of Gerald Vick, a bodyguard for the co-owner of a Hallandale bar where O’Callaghan worked. The high court’s decision to intervene in O’Callaghan’s case came after a circuit court last Thursday refused to issue a stay of execution. The Supreme Court gave no explanation for its unsigned, one-sentence opinion. Nor did the justices say whether they will grant O’Callaghan’s request for a new trial. 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 Execution still on, judge says Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hoffman, Lisa Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Miami Herald Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984-05-30 Language A language of the resource English Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment--Florida. 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 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Miami, Florida https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/e6569123c9d6ae959df8c19a53c878f4.jpg a7d828c725c2ffd5de6022449efc3c67 https://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://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 https://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://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://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://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://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