3 20 70 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/a1c8c1486997650064e8f392793a81c3.jpg b7eb9f3c7afbbc93fb9c794090a46c67 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [heading] An Outlaw's road [subheading] By Bruce Vielmetti Times Staff Writer [start of the first column] TAMPA -- Clarence Smith wears many marks of an Outlaw. He's got the tattoos, the Harley-Davidson cap, the vest with the skull and crossed pistons and "1 percenter" patches. He also carries the invisible scars of nine years on Louisiana's death row, and the distinction of being the only inmate to leave there a free man. His story got little publicity last year, in part because Smith avoided it. While someone else might have held news conferences and gone on talk shows to decry injustice or seek redress, Smith got a Harley and followed Outlaw Motorcycle Club advice to "go party for a year and get my mind right." Then authorities in Tampa last fall announced the indictment of 18 Outlaws and associates. At a biker funeral in Buffalo, Smith volunteered to come here and hold down the fort at the group's clubhouse of Busch Boulevard. "I was the freshest (out of prison), the cleanest," Smith said. Life on the road was good, he said, "but you gotta have a purpose." His was to support the "brothers" in the latest trial, and to try to get the Tampa chapter back on its feet. He was a daily spectator at the 41 1/2-month trial, where witnesses and prosecutors suggested his presence was just another part of the Outlaws ongoing criminal enterprise. Smith, 51, recently broke his silence about the Tampa case, his own brush with execution, and that of Joseph "Crazy Joe" [end of the first column] [start of the second column] A report in Spaziano's case is disputed. Page 5B [text continued] Spaziano, 50 another veteran Outlaw whose scheduled death in Florida's electric chair was delayed last week after questions were raised about the fairness of his conviction. "The parallels in the two cases are striking," said Spaziano's attorney, Michal Mello. "I'm hoping the final parallel will be that in a retrial, Joe will be acquitted." Smith said he plans to retire from the Outlaws Motorcycle Club soon, but remain a kind of ambassador for the group, which he says law enforcement has unfairly prosecuted for decades. "They've got us targeted for extinction," Smith says. He blames federal racketeering, or RICO laws, that he says make any unpop- [end of the second column] [start of the third column] ular group subject to persecution. "It's us today and y'all tomorrow." Zero tolerance That has been a familiar refrain of Outlaws and their sympathizers. But over the years, law enforcement has prosecuted dozens of members successfully for everything from prostitution to heinous murders. In the recent Tampa case, four Daytona members were found guilty of racketeering conspiracy, and 10 Tampa Bay defendants were found guilty of drug and gun charges. However, half the jury was highly critical of the government's elaborate undercover sting that led to the drug charges. Government witnesses portrayed the Please see ROAD 7B [end page] Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Vol. No./Issue No. Volume and issue number for the newspaper (if available) vol. 68, issue 6 Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Harrison, William 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 An Outlaw's Road Description An account of the resource The article is a short account of a "outlaw." Clarence Smith was a convicted felon and spent nine years on death row. His story draws many parallels to Joseph Spaziano's according to Spaziano's lawyer. The article continues to briefly talk on Clarence and his work to ensure fairness in trials for felons from his biker gang. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Vielmetti, Bruce 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 Gang members Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 JPG 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Vielmetti, Bruce, “An Outlaw's Road,” HIST298, https://hist299.umwhistory.org/admin/items/show/236. https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/5610a6453d79eddaeb82d9f6ce824c1b.jpg bfd33fcd8302b711a9b49f3c2015c564 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/c19b485d412c41dff3c25e2fd86769cf.jpg 8d1b7685b8bf6a836aa3338fd7a26784 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [start page one] [heading] A witness Says He Lied, But the Execution Is On [subheading] Florida Says Case Review Raises No Doubt By Larry Rother [start of the first column] MIAMI, Sept. 30- At his trial, no physical evidence linked Joseph Spaziano to the murder of a young Orlando woman, only a drug-addled teenager's lurid testimony about being taken to a garbage dump and shown the sexually mutilated decomposing remains of the victim. That was all the jurors needed to convict him. But now, 20 years later, with Mr. Spaziano's death warrant already signed and the electric chair waiting, that witness, Tony DiLisio, has come forward to say he lied. He fabricated the story, he asserts, to please police investigators, who planted details of his testimony in his memory during hypnosis and promised to spring him from a drug rehabilitation center if he cooperated "I've been bound up in lies, and I finally made a decision to do what's right," Mr, Dilisio, a 38-year-old automobile restore and lay preacher who lives in Pensacola, Fla., said in a telephone interview. "I've been shaking inside for the last 20 years, and it finally came tome to speak the truth. I had a path I had to choose because the man was going to be expected in two weeks." But despite Mt. DiLisio's recanting his story and other irregularities that have been documented but lawyers, private investigators, and [start of the second column] newspaper reporters, reexamining the Soaxiano case, Florida is pressing ahead with its effort to electrocute Mr. Spaziano. Earlier this month, Gov. Lawton Chiles denied that "there has been no rush to judgment on this thing," and assailed Mr. Spaziano's lawyer, saying his tactics "look pretty manufactured to me."  By his own admission, Mr. Spaziano was anything but a model citizen when he was arrest for the 1973  torture-murder of Laura Lynn Harberts, an 18-year-old hospital clerk. President of the Orlando chapter of the Outlaws motorcycle gang, Mr. Spaziano earned the nickname Crazy Joe from his erratic behavior after a truck ran over his head in his hometown of Rochester. He was also well-known in Central Florida as a marijuana dealer, fence, and pimp. But transcripts of the trial reveal that the prosection's case against Mr. Spaziano rested not on his notoriety but almost exclusively on the account of Mt DiLisio, who was a 16- [start of the third column] year-old biker wannabe at the time of the killing. "If we cant get in the testimony of Tony Dilisio, we'd have absolutely no case whatsoever," one prosecutor told the judge on the case at the time. What the jurors were not told was that Mr. DiLiso's testimony had been induced by hypnosis. Nor was the panel informed that his only visit to the murder site was conducted by police, who were frustrated at his inability to recall even the most basic details of the killing under hypnosis. In 1985, a decade after Mt. Spaziano was convicted, the Florida Supreme Court ruled the testimony derived from memories refreshed by hypnosis is so intrinsically suspect as to be inadmissible in court. But, in an effort to avoid a series of lengthy and costly retrials the decision was not applied retroactively, and Mr. Spaziano's conviction stood. "They should have ordered a new trail back the," argued Michael Mello, a lawyer who, until recently, had been representing Mr. Spaziano since the case was handed over to him the day he joined the public defender's office more than a decade ago."This is the only capital case I am aware of in which the critical testimony was the product of hypnosis." Mr. Mello now teaches law at the Vermont Law School in South Royalton, VT., and had continued to handle the Spaziano case on a pro bono basis until the Florida Supreme Court removed him from the case, criticizing him got what the justices called his "flagrant disregard of this Court's procedures and directions." Mr. Mello said in a telephone interview that he had represented more than 70 condemned men but that Mr. Spaziano is the only one he was absolutely convinced was innocent.  According to affidavits Mr. Mello has obtained from the jurors in the case, Mr. Spaziano's conviction was obtained despite lingering doubts, [end page one] [start page two] [start of the fourth column] But as Justice Gerald Kogan a member of the Florida Supreme Court who has criticized what he calls the state's "unseemly rush to execute a man," noyed recently, judges in Florida no longer have authority. Instead, the "jury's vote for life imprisonment would be legally binding today," and Mr. Spaziano would automatically be spared the electric chair even if convicted. At the time he was being questioned, Mr. DiLisio was a frequent user of LSD and marijuana who had been sentenced to a drug rehabilitation center and was largely estranged from his family. Police detective took him to see Joe B. McCawley, a hypnotist whose work had been previously discredited in another notorious Florida murder trial.  During an initial hypnosis session, the transcript reveals, Mr. DiLisio was not helpful, talking of hearing Mr. Spaziano brag about hiding stolen motorcycles at an orange grove by a lake but supplying no useful details about the Jarberts killing. But two days later after police took him to the garbage dump to "refresh" his memory. Mr. DiLisio [Image of Joseph Spaziano- Associated Press] was again put into a light trance and questioned. This time, after some prodding, was asked about a corpse he said: "I think I saw one," but then described the remains as that of "an old woman" before Mr. McCawley furnished him with the correct details. Mr. DiLisio said that he has known all along that "what I did was bad," but thought that because perjury laws "I would have to go to prison for it if I ever brought the truth forward." He now accuses the police of brainwashing and manipulation him, describing himself as a frightened and confused teen-ager, eager  [start of the fifth column] for attention and affection and eager to get out of juvenile detention at any cost. "I was like a fog on a leash, with a bone in front of me," he said. "They liked what I did, and it gave me gratification that I was cooperating with them. I was a disturbed child at that time." Following the public outcry about the case as a result of Mr. DiLisio's recantation in June, Gov. Lawton Chiles issued an indefinite stay of execution pending investigation by the Florida Police Department of Law Enforcement. On Aug. 24, though he signed another death warrant, saying that "this exhaustive review removes any doubt in my mind about the case."  Since the death penalty was restored in Florida in 1978, 34 people have died in the electric chair, making the state second only to Texas in the number of executions. During his successful reelection campaign last year, Mr. Chiles, a populist Democrat, was stung on television ads sponsored by a conservative opponent, Republican Jeb Bush, that accused him of being soft on the more 300 convicted killer sitting on the state's death row. Just after Labor Day the Florida Supreme Cout rejected, by a 4-3 voted, a request for an indefinite stay of execution and approved a Sept. 21 execution for Mr. Spaziano in the electric chair at the Florida State prision in Starke, But less than a week later the court partially reversed itself, ordering a hearing on the new evidence by Nov. 15. Mr. Spaziano's case is now being handled by a state agency that presents indigent inmates on death row, and by a Miami law firm. To help the proceedings along, Mr. DiLision has agreed to take a polygraph test, be injected with truth serum to yo cooperate in any other fashion that is requested. "I don't know whether Jow Spaziano is guilty or innocent," Mr. DiLisio said. "but I know that I lied then and that the only thing I have to gain now is a clear conscience. I'm not defensive, I'm not confused. I have no fear, and as long as I speak the truth at all times, I can stand strong, and the truth will prevail." [end of page two] [end of article] 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. 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 witness says he lied, but the execution is on Subject The topic of the resource Death Penalty Witnesses Description An account of the resource A witness in the Spaziano case says that he lied and fabricated the story of Spaziano murdering a young Orlando women. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rother, Larry Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The New York Times Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-10-01 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 2 JPGs Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Miami, Fl https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/08c0dfab3a8795025f7a0361689913e4.jpg 8c56e5e1ed1267a035fe7e1a8ba80b39 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 VLS Prof Doesn't Hide His Feelings Subject The topic of the resource Vermont Law school Professor makes feelings known about court case verdict. Description An account of the resource Vermont Law Professor Michael Mello makes his feelings known regarding the O. J. Simpson court case verdicts. He took a moment during a seminar on preparing a U.S. Supreme Court petition to summon the case. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Marquard, Bryan K. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Valley News Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available History 298 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 3, 1995 [based on the date of O.J. verdict decision] 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 South Royalton, VT Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [start page one] [heading] VLS Prof Doesn't Hide His Feelings [subheading] By BRYAN K. MARQUARD Valley News Staff Writer [start of the first column] SOUTH ROYALTON- At Vermont Law School, Professor Michael Mello was teaching a capital punishment seminar a few hours after the verdicts were announced in the O.J. Simpson case. Mello, an expert who has been involved in dozens of capital punishment cases in Florida, makes no secret of his feelings about the Simpson case. A footnote in his curriculum vitae gives a concise list of the major newspapers he has appeared, but notes, "I am pleased to say that I have never been quoted in the Nicole Brown Simpson/Ron Goldman murder trial." Nevertheless, he paused to invoke that case during a seminar that is a clinic on preparing a U.S. Supreme Court certiorari petition on behalf of his client, Joseph Spaziano, who is on death row in Florida for a murder in which the state's chief witness has now recounted his testimony. "We can't let this day pass without a reference to the O. J. Case," Mello told the second- and third-year law students in the seminar. "As it turns out, I have a tie-in to Joe's case." [start of the second column] He then held up an editorial cartoon for the Miami Herald. On one side of the panel, Simpson was dancing, his shackled hands above his head with the shackle breathing. On the other side, Spaziano sat in an electric chair while the governor of Florida threw the switch. Simpson and the governor were smiling; Spaziano's head was covered with a hood and smoke was rising from his body. Above Simpson, the text read, "Los Angeles, CA: Defendant faces voluminous forensic evidence, witnesses, and strong motive, but his case is investigated by a foul-mouthed, egomaniacal, racist cop..." Above Spaziano, it read, "Tallahassee, FL: Defendant faces no forensic evidence, motive, and a main witness who admits to lying after police coerced his incriminating testimony..." The grim, biting humor of the cartoon was mitigated a while later when a student misheard a judge's name that came up in the discussion. "They have another Judge Ito in Florida?" the student asked. "No, Judge Eaton," Mello replied. "There's only one Lance Ito and there's no Dancing Eatons," he said, alluding to the Dancing Itos, a comedy sketch that has become a staple of The Tonight Show. [end of article] 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. Morton, Mariah 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 VLS Prof Doesn't Hide His Feelings Subject The topic of the resource Mello, Michael. Simpson, O. J. Description An account of the resource Vermont Law Professor Michael Mello, while teaching a seminar on capital punishment, could not hide his feelings regarding the O. J. Simpson court case verdict. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Marquard, Bryan K. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Valley News Staff Writer 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 October 3, 1995 [according to the O.J. Simpson verdict date] 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 South Royalton, VT Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 JPG 300 DPI https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/c0349ce14514e9bb77e1216f8083e0f4.jpg 6f4e495634e0c857c2ffa98de00b8174 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/e1c35c3520d3f3aa0bda9502b171be29.jpg fc759c7bf0133d155e6f328c0e753255 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/c73d4b5be711b4b18df8857dae23a5e5.jpg a307ba8dea7f7dbaf6a2b6d6219cb6e6 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/0dae1f7da640aa010da0b03c56a888e9.jpg e0b3f830b9d6edc9c2f9c1cf71124ba5 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Vol. No./Issue No. Volume and issue number for the newspaper (if available) Sunday Issue from 1995-10-08 Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Silberstein, Michael Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Text Any textual data included in the document [title] Lawyer Stretches The Ethics Envelope [title] [image – Michael Mello] VLS Professor Knows Time Is Running Out For Death Row Client [subtitle] By BRYAN K. MARQUARD Valley News Staff Writer Michael Mello believes that one of his clients – a convicted murderer – is innocent. Such a belief is hardly surprising coming from an appellate attorney who has spent a dozen years keeping this client away from Old Sparky, the nickname for Florida’s electric chair. But Mello, a professor at Vermont Law School, has taken it one step further. Innocence he said, is an attribute Joseph Robert Spaziano does not share with any other condemned man with whom Mello has worked – and he has been closely involved in about 70 death row cases. “I’m saying he’s innocent the old fashioned way, as my mother would put it,” Mello has written. “Joe Spaziano didn’t do the crime, period. This fact makes him unique among my death row clients.” That final phrase, which has appeared in opinion articles he wrote for the Miami Herald, the Valley News and the Vermont Law Review, is a bold statement – one that some legal experts say would never be allowed in a courtroom argument. The decision to publish it presented Mello with a moral dilemma: toe the line of legal ethics, or go all out in an attempt to prevent the execution of a man that he believed “in the marrow of my bones” was innocent. There are many things that make this case unusual. If he were beginning his trip through the court system today, Spaziano would not end up on death row, and in all likelihood would not be convicted. Spaziano was sentenced to be electrocuted for murdering a woman in 1973. According to Florida newspaper accounts, no physical evidence connected him to the crime. He was convicted on the basis of testimony by a teenage boy who only remembered hearing Spaziano talk about the killing after two sessions of hypnosis – and the teen said their conversation took place on a day when they took LSD, smoked marijuana and got drunk. In 976, a jury recommended life in prison, but a judge imposed a death sentence instead. Years later, the Florida Supreme Court decided that so-called hypnotically refreshed testimony is not admissible in trails, but the ruling was applied retroactively and was of no help to [end page] Lawyer Pushes Envelope As Client’s Time Runs Down [title] unable to determine the cause of Harbert’s death. Spaziano has alibi for the day Harbert’s disappeared, and Mello said there are reasons. To begin with, he wasn’t a suspect for two years and its difficult for all but those who keep journals to recall a single day two years later, Mello said. Also, Spaziano was run over by a truck in 1966, and the severe head injury still limits his memory. Brain damage from the accident led to behavior that earned him the nickname Crazy Joe, Mello said. In Florida, death warrants signed by governor are pieces of paper with thick black borders, the better to distinguish them from run-of-the mill government paperwork. During the more than 19 years Spaziano has been on death row, three governors have signed a total of five warrants. When the Florida Supreme Court issued its most recent indefinite stay of execution last month, Spaziano’s head had already been shaved in anticipation of the trip to Old Sparky, Mello called Sept. 12 with the news. It was Spaziano’s 50th birthday – the 20th he has celebrated on death row. The Last Death Row Case [subtitle] But for the book-lined surroundings in the living room of his Wilder home, Mello looked like he could be on death row as he discussed the Spaziano case. He smoked on Camel filtered cigarette after another in an interview punctuated by coughs – a reminder of a battle with pneumonia that Mello waged earlier this year. A carved cigarette holder provided another filter for the nicotine, and is a reminder of another threat to his health. Mello, who is 38, underwent surgery a few months ago for possible cancer of the tongue. The prognosis is good: no cancer was found. The prognosis is not so good for Spaziano. The Florida Supreme Court set an early November date for an evidence hearing, and Mello – along with a capital punishment class he teaches at Vermont Law School – is preparing a certiorari petition for the U.S. Supreme Court. But Spaziano’s case has gone before both courts on various occasions during the past 19 years. After the key witness, Tony Dilisio, recanted his testimony in June, public outcry prompted Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles to issue an indefinite stay of execution until a review of the case could be completed by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Based on that agency’s report, the governor signed another death warrant even though he ordered the report sealed, which is permissible in clemency proceedings. The state supreme court first rejected an appeal for an indefinite stay and set a hearing shortly before the Sept. 21 execution date. But Mello refused to participate, saying he had too little time to prepare and no resources. The gamble paid off: the court instituted an indefinite stay and ordered the November hearing, but it also ordered Mello of the case. That order appears to have had little effect on Mello, whose life and home are consumed with the case; he estimated he has spent about $12,000 of his own money this year on phone bills, materials and court charges while working to save Spaziano. It all may be for naught. Mello’s efforts have resulted in the sentences of many condemned men being commuted to life sentences, but he is icily realistic about his chances this time. Only one other person on Florida’s death row has survived five death warrants, and he was executed on the seventh. “The likely outcome I think is that the evidentiary hearing will happen … and we’ll lose,” Mello said. “Gov. Chiles will sign a new death warrant the day we lose the hearing … So I think he’s got two months.” “Joe’s had two miracles already with the last four months,” he added. “I don’t know if he’s got enough karma left for another one.” Lawyer and client have already discussed one detail: Mello will be present to witness the execution. If it occurs, it will be the first execution Mellow has attended. And Spaziano, he said, is his last capital punishment case. Absolute Opposition [subtitle] Mello said he decision to flout ethics rules in a last-ditch attempt to save Spaziano could be seen as civil disobedience. Although he agonized over the decision to single out Spaziano as an innocent client, Mello has no regrets. He has worked on other death row cases involving better-know clients, among them serial killer Ted Bundy, who was sentenced in December to the electric chair for killing an abortion doctor and his escort in Pensacola Fla. “I absolutely oppose the legal system of capital punishment that operates in the U.S. today,” Mello said. There currently are no circumstances under which his opposition would waver “because any capital punishment that will execute Ted Bundy … will also have the power to execute Joe Spaziano.” “The question everyone ought to be asking themselves about capital punishment isn’t whether you support in the abstract, because that’s irrelevant,” he added. “The question is whether you think the criminal justice system as it exists today is competent and reliable enough to make the right choices in deciding who among us has lost their moral entitlement to live, who among us deserves to die. “And I don’t see how anyone followed the O.J. trial, and certainly no one who has read with anything remotely like an open mind the trial transcripts in Joe Spaziano’s case can support capital punishment.” [end page] Spaziano. Today, a jury’s call for a life sentence is binding, but Mello said Spaziano’s appeal passed through the courts during a brief time when judges were not overruled if they ignored jury recommendations and meted out death sentences. And then there’s the prosecution’s key witness, Tony Dilisio. “if you don’t believe Tony Dilisio, find this defendant not guilty in five minutes,” a newspaper account quoted the prosecutor as telling the jury in 1976. Earlier this summer, Dilisio forcefully recanted his testimony. “Joe has been an incredible victim of bad timing and bad luck,” Mello said in an interview last week. Mello, formerly a public defender in Florida, said proclaiming Spaziano’s innocence at the beginning of an opinion piece for the Miami Herald was necessary to convince the newspaper to report on the case. He sought the involvement of the paper because its reporting had led to the pardons of two death row inmates in the 1970s. Since the opinion piece appeared, stories reported by the Herald, including the witness’s recantation, led some Florida newspapers to call for a reexamination of Spaziano’s conviction and death sentence. First the governor and then Florida Supreme Court ordered temporary delays in his execution. By singling out Spaziano’s innocence in his opinion piece, Mello helped spare a life – at least until next month, when a hearing is scheduled. But by his own admission, he also flouted established rules of legal ethics, and some experts say he potentially cast aspersions on his 69 other death row inmates – about a dozen of whom have already been executed. “It certainly could potentially have legal ramifications for me and professional ramifications for me since me saying that, I think is a fairly clear violation of Florida’s ethics rules governing the behavior of lawyers.” said Mello, who became involved in Spaziano’s case while handling capital appeals in Florida during the 1980s. Several legal ethics experts interviewed by the Valley News said that a published statement such as Mello’s could raise a host of issues, such as potential breach of confidentiality by suggesting that he had personal knowledge of the guilt or innocence of his clients and was publicly revealing the information. Others cited a potential for conflict of interest in playing the needs of one client against dozens of others, or the possibility that by going to the media, Mello skirted a rule that prohibits lawyers from personally vouching in court for the guilt or innocence of a client. The bluntest remarks came from Geoffrey Hazard, a trustee professor at the University of Pennsylvania. The public comment violated “the spirit of the rule that a lawyer may not make a personal affirmation concerning the guilt or innocence of a client,” he said. The second problem, he added, is that such as statement “condemns everybody else that he’s represented in a capital case.” But some of the experts also said that Mello’s potential lapses may well have been called for in a situation such as Spaziano’s, which has taken several unusual legal twists. “In my mind, he gets pretty high marks for going to the wall for his client,” said Jim Duggan, the chief appellate defender for the state of New Hampshire, who teaches at Franklin Pierce Law Center. “In my book, it’s a minor peccadillo if at all,” said the Rev. Rebert Drinan, founder of the Georgetown University Journal of Legal Ethics. “I’m prepared to give him absolution from whatever sin he might have committed.” And David E. Kendall, who spent five years in the 1970s working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said of Mello: “He’s a resourceful, dedicated and creative anti-capital punishment lawyer.” Kendall, who currently is counsel to President Bill Clinton on the Whitewater matter, said Mello is “held in the highest regard by his colleagues.” Mello said that, to date, none of this former death row clients has expressed anger or concern over his published statement. There has been some adverse reaction from colleagues and former colleagues, however, which he characterized as: “How can you sell your other 69 clients down the road?’ … That’s a good question. It’s a damm good question that I don’t have a real good answer for.” The only explanation, he said, is that the statement is true, and that publishing it was the only way to get the necessary media attention. As of Friday, no complaints had been filed with Florida Bar association, a spokes-women said; Mello remains a member in good standing. A 50th Birthday Present [subtitle] In many newspaper accounts of this case, Spaziano is referred to in headlines as “Crazy Joe” – a nickname he picked up during his days a local chapter leader of the Outlaws motorcycle gang. A police mug shot from the early 1970s shows him with the thick flowing hair and beard of a biker – a stark contrast to the file photograph Florida newspapers run of the victim, Laura Lynn Harberts, and attractive, 18-year-old hospital clerk from Orlando. Police did not focus on Spaziano as a murder suspect for two years. By that time, he had been charged and convicted of brutally raping and assaulting a 16-year-old girl – a crime he also says he did not commit, and one that Mello also hopes to overturn. Authorities said that crime bore similarities to the Harberts murder, but newspaper accounts note that a medical examiner was [end page] Opposition To Capital Punishment Goes Back To Teen Years [title] By Bryan K. Marquard Valley News Staff Writer The play Inherit the Wind suggested a pair of potential career pats to Michael Mello when he was a high school student in Virginia. He was impressed by the Clarence Darrow and H.L. Mencken characters and weighed the options of whether to pursue law or journalism. “I ultimately decided that I wasn’t a good enough writer to be a journalist,” he said, “so I ended up going to law school.” Before leaving high school, however, the teenager came across a passage in his readings that planted the seeds for what has become a career-long opposition to capital punishment as it is practiced in this country. “For as long as I remember, I’ve had a visceral opposition to capital punishment,” Mello said. “it’s interesting, I can trace that back to a moment in high school when I read somewhere that the chemical compound that California uses in its gas chamber is the same chemical with the same trade name – Zyklon B – that the Nazis used at Auschwitz.” “I wanted to be real clear about this – that’s a totally irrational connection to make particularly in light of the Johnnie Cochran atrocities over the last week or so,” he added, referring to the lawyer for O.J. Simpson who compared Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman to Adolph Hitler. “Any parallel to the Holocaust, but especially those sort of facile ones, I find just revolting and deeply, deeply offensive.” Nevertheless, as a teenager in the 1970s, reading that simple fact about a deadly chemical had a significant impact. Mello is Jewish, and the Holocaust was a subject of discussion when he was growing up. “A good part of the reason why I read as much about the Holocaust as I did starting in high school and continuing up as recently as last night was that part of my mother’s family was killed, most likely in Warsaw ghetto or Auschwitz,” he said. “It’s something that is very much a part of my own sort of emotional and psychic landscape,” he added.“It’s something I’ve never written about – and I’m not sure that I ever will write about it – but it’s never far from my consciousness.” Mello was born in Washington and grew up in northern Virginia. His parents worked for the government, although his memory – a precise tool when applied to his clients’ cases – is somewhat vague on this point. “My mother was a secretary and father was something in government,” he said. “I’ve never really been clear on what that was.” After graduating from Mary Washing College in Fredericksburg, Va., with a degree in history and philosophy, and from the University of Virginia law school, his first job provided the experience that sparked his interest in capital punishment cases and cemented his opposition. In 1982, Mello became the so-called “death clerk” for Judge Robert S. Vance of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. “Which meant that all of the death cases that came into his chambers came through me,” Mello said. A year later, he joined the capital appeals division of the Florida Defender’s office in West Palm Beach, Fla. Mello felt that, coming from a working class background, he had “an obligation to give something back” through public service. He also harbored a measure of guilt because of a certain case from his year as a clerk. Mello was told to draft an opinion for Vance upholding the constitutionality of a particular death sentence. The prisoner, Ivon Ray Stanley, “clearly was retarded, clearly was a follower in a bad crime – but a fairly run of the mill felony murder case,” Mello said. “Ivon Ray Stanley probably will be count one of the indictment against me that’s going to end me up in hell,” he said. “I agonized over the opinion.” He briefly considered not writing the opinion or resigning, but friends said “if you quit and walk away, someone else will come in and do it, and won’t have you sensibilities, won’t even realize that this case is a problem.” His first assignment during his first week as a public defender was an appeal for Joseph Spaziano, a convicted murderer on death row. More than a dozen years after Mello encountered the case, he draws a narrative thread from the Ivon Ray Stanley decision to his work on behalf of Joseph Spaziano to a decision to walk away from his work as a lawyer in death row appeals. Spaziano, Mello said, in his final battle. “It’s the old liberal’s dilemma: To what extent should you buy into a system that’s not fair? And I knew that I was unfair then,” Mello said. “I concluded more recently because of Joe Spaziano’s case … that the system’s not just unfair, but it’s evil. And the way Joe Spaziano’s case was treated by the courts really was the final push that led me to a personal decision not to participate in any other (capital punishment) cases.” [end page] 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 Lawyer Stretches The Ethics Envelope Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment--United States Description An account of the resource A reporting in the "Valley News" over the legal dispute surrounding Michael Mello's claim that his client, Joeseph Robert Spazionao, is innocent. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Marquard, Bryan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bryan Marquard, "Lawyer Stretches the Ethical Envelope," Valley News (West Lebanon, NH) October 8, 1995. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-10-08 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 4 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 Florida New Hampshire Innocent Joeseph Robert Spazionao Michael Mello https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/5f0a233f088aadf6da81a772b7c032ab.jpg 2099bf09d794ac930221d09d0c579f76 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/cca1408ee1af19bb73d70782375bed2f.jpg 8d2a0ee5192d1ef9d2abaf000526c779 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/81ad9a4b7f615b2509bc307c38922fbf.jpg 973cb8a2e7ff0f4927b09451e21bdac0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [Title] Justices chided for overturning 5 high-profile homicide case [Author] Mike Donoghue Montpelier -- A recent string of convictions overturned in several high-profile cases, including five homicides, has no common thread and might be rooted in the independent nature of the Vermont Supreme Court. Michael A. Mello, a Vermont Law School professor, and David Putter, a Montpelier lawyer, are among the legal scholars giving the high court top marks for independence in tough cases. "There does not appear to be a common thread," Putter said. "Obviously, they have a lot of cases they didn't overturn." Putter said he doubts the justices enjoy overturning cases, but have a duty to make sure trials are fair. The more complex the case, the more likely an error is made, he said. Overturning five homicide cases in one year has netted the court public criticism from the family of victims, jurors, one prosecutor and even Gov. Howard Dean. Records indicate that 15 out of 22 homicide convictions have been upheld in recent years. The criticism fails to loosen the lips of Vermont Chief Justice Frederic Allen. Allen said recently he never comments on cases even when they are considered closed because they sometimes have a way of being reopened. Mello said the homicide reversals by the Supreme Court are based on different fact patterns. Mello, at the request of The Burlington Free Press, recently reviewed the reversals in four homicide cases: Rebecca Durenleau in Chittenden County, Christopher Bacon in Windham [end page one] [start page two]County, and Monica Pollard and Wayne Delisle in Franklin County. The Supreme Court said: -In Durenleau, the verdict was incorrectly based on the jury's conjecture. -In Bacon, the trial judge erred when he explained the concept of intent. -In Pollard, there was inadequate proof in the court record to show he was competent to enter a guilty plea. -In Delisle, the judge erred in his instructions on whether the defendant could be found guilty of manslaughter, a lesser offense. Mello praises the court for overturning Delisle's murder conviction. Mello noted he is working on the appeal for a Florida death row inmate and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the same argument. Mello, who has taught at the law school in South Royalton for eight years, said the Vermont court, in overturning other cases, is a strong believer in protecting rights of citizens, especially when it comes to search and seizure. Reaction and change Former Chittenden County State's Attorney William Sorrell was among those livid by the high court's overturning the 1992 conviction of Rebecca Durenleau for helping her then-lover Harmon Olmstead kill her husband, Michael Durenleau, in 1985. The high court said the jurors had used too much circumstantial evidence to convict the woman and had to leap too far to connect The justices [image - Frederic Allen, labeled: Name: Chief Justice Frederic Allen Date of birth: May 31, 1926 Residence: Shelburne Family: Wife, Karen McAndrew; two sons and two daughters Background: Born and educated in Burlington. 1951 graduate of Boston University Law School, Burlington alderman, private practice with Dinse, Allen and Erdmann 1951-84. Named chief justice in 1984.] [image - Ernest Gibson, labeled: Name: Associate Justice Ernest Gibson Date of birth: Sept. 23, 1927 Residence: Montpelier Family: Wife, Charlotte; one son and two daughters Background: Born and educated in Brattleboro. 1956 graduate of Harvard Law School, former state's attorney and legislator from Windham County, chairman of the Public Service Board in 1963, elected a Superior Court judge in 1972. Appointed to Supreme Court in February 1983. ] [image - John Dooley, labeled: Name: Associate Justice John Dooley Date of birth: April 10, 1944 Residence: South Burlington Family: Wife, Sandra Background: Born and educated in Nashua, N.H. 1968 graduate of Boston College Law School, head of Vermont Legal Aid, secretary of administration for governor. Appointed to the court in June 1987.] [end page two] [start page three] her to the death. In a rare move, the court set Durenleau free instead of ordering a new trial. Although the case angered the public, there appeared to be no doubt in the mind of the high court. The diverse court had no dissenting opinions. Sorrell, who has been mentioned as a possible successor to Allen when he retires in the spring, said the court did not have the benefit of hearing the testimony or noting the demeanor of witnesses. Sorrell's criticism of the court is rare among lawyers for two reasons: The Supreme Court is in charge of discipline, and most losing lawyers know they are likely to have more cases before the justices. Nothing can be done when the court says there was too little evidence, as in Durenleau's case. After other Vermont Supreme Court rulings, the Legislature has passed new laws to overrule the effect a court decision can have in future cases. Former Attorney General M. Jerome Diamond said he won a workman's compensation claim on appeal and the next session of the Legislature, lawmakers passed a law prohibiting others from winning under similar circumstances. Putter agrees with Diamond. Putter noted the court can make "bad law," as when it upheld the conviction of the killer of policeman Edward Battick, but ruled the mandatory life sentence actually meant up to life and parole was available immediately. The Legislature later passed laws establishing new sentences for first- and second-degree murder and allowed for life sentences without parole. Diamond said he would not be surprised if the Legislature were asked to eliminate the three-year statute of limitations for manslaughter because of the Delisle case and a similar Chittenden County case. [image - James Morse, labeled: Name: Associate Justice James Morse Date of birth: Sept. 11, 1940 Residence: Charlotte Family: Wife, Gretchen; two daughters Background: Born in New York City and educated in Eastchester, N.Y; 1969 graduate of Boston University Law School, defender general and Superior Court judge. Appointed to Supreme Court in 1988.] [image - Denise Johnson, labeled: Name: Associate Justice Denise Johnson Date of birth: July 13, 1947 Residence: Shrewsbury Family: Husband, Thomas Wies; a son and a daughter Background: Born and raised in Wyandotte, Mich. 1974 graduate of University of Connecticut Law School, Vermont Law School teacher, assistant attorney general 1980-88, Vermont Human Rights Commission 1988-90. Appointed to the Supreme Court in December 1990.] [end page three] Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newpaper Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Hobbs, Sophia 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 Justice chided for overturning 5 high-profile homicide cases Subject The topic of the resource Homicide--Law and legislation Vermont. Supreme Court Description An account of the resource In 1995, five homicide convictions are overturned by the Vermont Supreme Court. Michael Mello praises justices for overturning murder convictions. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Donoghue, Mike Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Donoghue, Mike. "Justices chided for overturning 5 high-profile homicide cases." The Burlington Free Press, October 8, 1995. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-10-08 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 3 JPGs 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Montpelier, VT homicide Michael Mello Vermont Vermont Supreme Court https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/c09772a2879fa1a07326d2b0d8d08eff.jpg cf26c69aa48c7b1b71160e25f5d8cd48 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [title] Lawyer takes Spaziano case to top U.S. court  [subtitle] Michael Mello seeks an FDLE report that he says can help the ex-Outlaws motorcycle member. By Jim Leusner Of The Sentinel Staff A lawyer who was booted from representing convicted killer Joseph Spaziano by the Florida Supreme Court is back again. Vermont law professor Michael Mello said Monday he was asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the state court's rulings in the case. He again is seeking access to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement report he says has evidence to aid his client's defense. Spaziano, a former Outlaws motorcycle gang member, is seeking a new trial in the 1973 murder of Orlando hospital clerk Laura Harberts. The state Supreme Court removed Mello from the case last month after he refused to attend a hearing in Sanford or turn over files to other lawyers ordered to represent Spaziano. A key witness who testified that Spaziano showed him Herberts' body at a dump recanted his story in June to the Miami Herold, prompting police and court reviews. The witness, Anthony DiLisio, insist that he lied at the urging of police and his father. The law firm of Holland & Knight and Orlando defense attorney James Russ volunteered to represent Spaziano at a hearing scheduled for the next month in Sanford, but that hasn't stopped Mello from continuing his fight. "There is no doubt whatsoever that I am Joe's counsel of record in the U.S. Supreme Court case," said Mello, adding the state court cannot bar his federal appearance. He maintains that Spaziano, 50, still wants him as his lawyer. Mello said he wants the high court to order the release of the FDLE report, which he contends Gov. Lawton Chiles has wrongfully kept secret. He also maintains that Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth has a conflict of interest in prosecuting the case while also having a vote on clemency proceedings presented by the governor. Mello said he may file a motion challenging his removal from Spaziano's state court appeal. Greg Thomas of Holland & Knight said his office was concentrating on the Sanford hearing and would not comment on the appeal. "It's a different court and a different issue," he said. Chiles has refused to grant Spaziano clemency. He also has refused to release the FDLE report, citing concern for the safety of witnesses and he confidentially of the clemency process. Chiles' counsel, Dexter Douglass, said he was surprised by Mello's actions, since clemency is authorized by the Florida Constitution, and is not a federal question. Douglas said there was nothing in the FDLE report that he believes would exonerate Spaziano. He also said that Butterworth's office has not seen report. [end page] Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Pace, Sam 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 Lawyer takes Spaziano cases to top U.S. court Subject The topic of the resource Spaziano murder trial Description An account of the resource Newspaper article from October 10, 1995 about the murder trial of Spaziano. The articles talks about Michael Mello's plea to the United States Supreme Court review the courts ruling. Stating that there is important evidence that can aid in Spaziano's defense Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Leusner, Jim Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-10-10 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Language A language of the resource English https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/8c7432c06bdca41733ab9e1f09e773c0.jpg d669badf92cdeefb0c2361ef570309b2 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/e522d08aaa4b181e3e7faac475dcce75.jpg 475431411119e1cbc0bd44ba45d919c5 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document (First Page) Southern Vermont Rutland Daily Herald Friday Morning, October 23, 1995 Windsor, Windham & Bennington P Will He Testify? By John Gregg Southern Vermont Bureau SPRINGFIELD - Park View Road is a pretty lane. Cow pastures and two upscale homes flank the narrow road that runs south for six-tenth of a mile off the Skitchewaug Trail. From a plow turn-around at the end of the road, you can enjoy a sweeping view of the Black River Valley well past Okemo Mountain. It would be the perfect place for a lovers’ tryst, but for the two “no parking signs” that were recently installed. And for something else, too. Parke View Road is where Jennifer Knight Little was murdered the evening of Feb. 4, 1994. She was stabbed six times and left to die in a snow bank. This week probably Tuesday morning, six women and nine men will visit the lane. They are the Jury in the Adam Corliss first-degree muder trial, and so far they have heard a week’s worth of testimony from witnesses for the prosecution. (Second Item) Trial Continued from Page 6 Chris Frappiner and the late Paul Kelly, contract investigators for the defender general’s office, spent dozens of hours developing a case against Durphey. And Donahue, a former Windsor Country prosecutor, is attempting to call several witnesses who say Durphey threatened them by claiming to have murdered Little. The defence also says it can knock holes in Durphey’s alibi, that he was having a party at home with friends when the murder occurred. Police describe Durphey a “braggart” who is not linked by any physical evidence to the scene. In a special session held outside the jury’s presence Monday afternoon, the defense will try to convince Judge Walter Morris Jr. that testimony allegedly implivating Durphey should be admitted as evidence. Zimmerman is attempting to limit any such evidence. What’s the Motive? Another area of interest in the case is motive. The defense has implied that Durphey would have been motivated by revenge to kill Little, who apparently broke up his relationship with another woman. During voir dire, Zimmerman noted to prospective jurors that the state was not required to prove a motive in the case, and she and Porter have barely explored that front thus far. But Black says the prosecution should probably try. “Legally, you don’t have to prove motive, but from a practical matter, if you were sitting on a jury, you would probably ask ‘why would he kill her?’ The fact that it is his knife doesn’t prove that he used it,” he said. In another twist, Zimmerman and Porter also may rely on a notorious sex offender to seal their case against Corliss Thomas Pellerin, currently serving a 18-to-20 year prison sentence for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl, befriended Corliss while the latter was incarcerated following his arrest. Accordion to opening statements, Pellerin either conned Corliss into giving him a signed confession to Little’s murder or helped him devise a scheme making Durphey into a “patsy” for Little’s murder. Michael Mello, a professor at Vermont Law School, says the defence appears in “pretty good shape” thus far and said the prosecution runs an “enormous risk” if it calls Pellerin to the witness stand. “It seems to me that the prosecution has more to less and less to gain in calling Pellerin than the defense has to gain and lose by calling Corliss,” said Mello. Taking the Stand And in the end, unless the state’s case unexpectedly collapses, the most critical testimony will probably come from Corliss himself, Mello said. Although defendants are not required to take the witness stand, Donahue has all but promised the jury that his client will testify. “If (Corliss) does take the witness stand, i think it will ultimately boil down to whether the jury believes him or not,” said Mello. “He was there, it was his knife. If he takes the witness stand, it will presumably be for the purpose of explaining to the jury what happened.” “My guess is they wouldn’t call him unless they thought he would be a pretty credible witness,” Mello said. “Ultimately, it’s going to be up to the jury to decide based on his demeanor and his credibility and believability on the witness stand. To the extent that the prosecution can show that he lied in the past, that doesn’t help him.” [end page] 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 Will He Testify? Subject The topic of the resource Murder Trial Description An account of the resource A newspaper article dated to October 23rd 1995 where the author discuses a murder trail under way with Adan Corliss being charged with the murder of Jennifer Little. The main bulk of the article discuses the approach of the prosecution and the defense on how they are going attack and defend Corliss receptivity Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gregg, John Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-10-23 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. 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, VT https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/b9fc78f92a58be3c2ae7a345438c4c2a.jpg 226ce3452cdaa3faabd35a8919d9660a https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/37e86978698d98446ad7f4abc759424c.jpg 8b481af85e64870e725ca63d8119b9a0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Letter Text Any textual data included in the document JAMES M. RUSS* TAD A. YATES *CERTIFIED CRIMINAL TRIAL AND CRIMINAL APPELLATE LAWYER BY THE FLORIDA BAR BOARD OF CERTIFICATION *CERTIFIED CRIMINAL TRIAL ADVOCATE BY THE NATIONAL BOARD OF TRIAL ADVOCACY LAW OFFICES OF JAMES M. RUSS PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION TINKER BUILDING 18 WEST PINE STREET ORLANDO, FLORIDA ZIP CODE 32801-2697 (407) 849 - 6050 FAX (407) 849 - 6059 LEGAL ASSISTANTS LORI A. LAKEMAN M. CHERIE HECKFORD January 19, 1996 PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL Michael Mello, Esquire Vermont Law School Chelsea Street South Royalton, Vermont Re: State of Florida v. Spaziano Case No. 75-430-CFA, Circuit Court, Eighteenth Judicial Circuit, Seminole County, Florida Dear Professor Mello: Enclosed is Mr. Spaziano’s January 18, 1996 memorandum to Circuit Judge Eaton, which essentially summarizes his evidentiary earring which was held between January 8 and January 15, 1996, in the Circuit Court, Eighteenth Judicial Circuit, Seminole County, Florida. But for your courage and fortitude, which were evidenced in your 1995 actions on behalf of Mr. Spaziano, there is no question but that he would be dead today. I write to thank you for the courageous efforts you made on his behalf, in the face of criticism by both the Florida Supreme Court and the legal profession. I also write to thank you for the excellent materials which you created during the Summer of 1995 which were filed in the Florida Supreme court, and which you shared with us. These materials were of immeasurable help to all of us in coming to an early understanding of this case under then-existing severe time pressure. As you can see from the enclosed legal memorandum, at the evidentiary hearing the points and the witnesses you previously developed were presented to Judge Eaton in support of the motion for new trial. Also enclosed is a copy of the State’s Memorandum of Law, which arrived at my office as i was dictating this letter. Michael Mello, Esquire January 19, 1996 Page 2 Judge Eaton will probably rule in this case shortly after you receive this letter and legal memorandum. Irrespective of Judge Eaton’s decision, I want to record in this letter my professional admiration for you and my appreciation for everything you have done. Very truly yours, James M Russ (signature) James M. Russ JMR:ch Enclosures Mr. Spaziano’s Memorandum of Law on Evidence of Newly Discovered Evidence and Recantation State’s Memorandum of Law Cc: Steven Hanlon, Esquire Holland & Knight 315 South Calhoun Street Tallahassee, Florida 32301 w/o enclosures Gregg Thomas, Esquire Holland & Knight 400 North Ashley Drive, Suit 2300 Post Office Box 1288 Tampa, Florida 33602 w/o enclosures Chesterfield H. Smith, Esquire Holland & Knight Post Office Box 015441 Miami, Florida 33101-5441 w/o enclosures Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Van Doren, Jamie 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 Re: State of Florida v. Spaziano Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-01-19 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 JPGs 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Description An account of the resource James M. Russ, an Orlando, Florida lawyer sends Mello his “professional admiration” for his work on the Spaziano case, as well as a memorandum by Spaziano to Judge Eaton and the State of Florida’s Memorandum of Law. 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 Florida Maine Subject The topic of the resource Spaziano, Joe Trials Litigation Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Russ, James M. James M Russ State of Florida v Spaziano https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/de98b1403237654e15c7a6f443f80ee0.jpg be7b0d99e5b4c6fbe6fb4b2cc55cece7 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/8affbde699646ecdade956cbd0367746.jpg 495525e8fca2740755ba49729ddd63c3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [title] A phony trial and a crucial issue: Justice [author] By Tony Proscio If you didn't know the players, you might have mistaken this for a romantic morality play: The tale of the Penitent Liar racing to the gallows to rescue the wrongly Convicted Man, just as the Crusading Lawyer lunges to stay the executioner's upraised hand. Great stuff. Standing room only. Free hankies with every performance. Trouble is, history is a lousy screenwriter. The case of the State of Florida vs. Joseph Spaziano-- the 20-year-old murder trial under examination in a Seminole County courtroom-- has all the makings of a first-rate tearjerker. The man about to be executed could well be innocent. The testimony that put him on death row is almost certainly false. And his "trial" was a mockery of the Constitution. It's an alarming story of American justice. But as a box-office blockbuster, it's got one giant problem: The cast stinks. The Wrongly Condemned Man. "Crazy Joe" Spaziano, is no Tom Hanks. He's a tough, scary-looking biker with a monster rap sheet and enough enemies (including several members of his own family) to overflow a medium-sized courtroom. The False-but-Penitent Witness isn't Brad Pitt, all doe-eyed remorse and misguided innocence. He's Tony DiLisio, a fast-talking former acidhead who seems to live permanently on the edge of hysteria. Twenty years ago, as a drugged-out teenager, he succumbed to police entreaties and two sessions of shamelessly suggestive hypnosis to accuse Spaziano, a former buddy, of torture and murder. A born-again Christian, he now admits that he was lying when his hand first rested on the Bible. Still, after days of anguished deliberation, a jury reluctantly believed his fabrication, and Spaziano headed for the electric chair. And the original Crusading Lawyer is no Jimmy Stewart. He's an angry ideologue who writes legal briefs that read like temper tantrums, a guy who insists on referring to his adversaries (including federal appellate judges) by the unprintable names of private body parts. These are not people you're likely to fall in love with. No one is going to become engrossed in this story for its glamour. In fact, many people seem to have missed the point of it entirely, apparently because it consists largely of small-town grotesques with often dark, imponderable motives. All of this may explain how surprised I was when Jim Leusner, a reporter for The Orlando Sentinel, approached me last week outside Judge O.H. Eaton Jr.'s courtroom in Seminole County, during a break in the Spaziano hearing. to ask me this remarkable question: "Has The Herald lost its objectivity on this story?" Huh? Lost its objectivity? For what? Because its reporters and editors were somehow enthralled by the allure of these magnetic personalities? Entranced by their Gandhi-like serenity? Blinded by their charm? What element of this story, I wanted to ask him, would have caused The Herald suddenly to shed its principles? No matter how little one might think of this newspaper--and I happen to think quite highly of it-- what possible motive could there be for casting ethics aside in this of all cases? What he meant, I suppose, is that Lori Rozsa, The Herald's lead reporter on this story, was the first journalist to pierce through to DiLisio's conscience and hear him admit his 20-year-old lie. On June 9, Rozsa went to DiLisio's Pensacola home seeking his view of his flimsy 1975 testimony. After getting the door slammed in her face, she used the salesman's classic stratagem she thrust her foot past the doorjamb. DiLisio soon gave in and finally told her what he previously had told only his pastor. He lied and had sent a man to probable death. That was dramatic (and top-notch) reporting. It demonstrated Rozsa's skill and determination. It yielded a Page One story. What it did not do is alter The Herald's interest in the case of Florida vs Spaziano. Well before Rozsa ever went to Pensacola--in fact, before her editor was even convinced that it was worth the trip--The Herald already had prepared an editorial saying that Spaziano's trial was a hopelessly [image-Proscio] [image caption- Tony Proscio was the Herald's associate editor from 1992-95. Now New York City's deputy commissioner of homeless services he wrote this article for the Herald] [end of Page one] [beginning of Page two] deficient basis for executing him. Why? Because we had read the transcripts of the trial and of DiLisio's abracadabra "hypnosis." Because we looked for corroboration, physical evidence, convincing testimony, and found absolutely none. Before the witness had recanted anything, before any Herald reporter had met him or even contemplated meeting him, keen observers of the legal system inside and outside the paper already had smelled the constitutional stench of a shamefully bad trial. The Florida Supreme Court, intrigued by DiLisio's recantation and Rozsa's reporting, eventually ordered the current hearing. As a result, Judge Eaton is expected to decide today or sometime very soon whether he believes what DiLisio says today, or what he said 20 years ago. Yet in all this high legal drama, the heart and soul of this horrendous matter seems to have been lost. Namely: The case against Spaziano smelled to high heaven before The Herald ran the first story on it. It was a phony prosecution, based on a single witness with a disastrous drug habit, several clear motives to lie, a story that took weeks (and two sessions of hypnotic suggestion) to concoct and a number of assertions that contradicted the known evidence. Were there two bodies or one? Were they side-by-side or piled one atop the other? Were they both young, or was one of them noticeably elderly? Were they covered or in plain view? Were they in a dump or an orange grove? Did Spaziano boast of murdering them or merely hint of committing other, similar murders? All of that depends on when the teenage DiLisio was talking, and to whom. Yet the whole prosecution of Joe Spaziano rested on this one troubled kid's twisted, incredible tale. Don't believe me. Believe the state's prosecutor at trial: "If you don't believe Tony DiLisio," he told the jury then, "the only possible verdict was not guilty." Eventually jurors reached the wrong conclusion. But don't blame them: No one ever told them about the hypnosis or the contradictions. Whether to believe Tony DiLisio is a crucial issue, but it's not the fundamental issue. The fundamental issue has nothing to do with DiLisio, or with Lori Rozsa, or with The Herald. It has to do with the electric chair, with justice and with this simple question: Does Florida dare -- does any decent society dare-- to electrocute a human being based on a trial like the one they gave Joe Spaziano 20 years ago? And if so, why bother with trials at all? That's what I should have said to Sentinel reporter Jim Leusner. Sometimes, though, the truest things don't come to your mind right away. Sometimes, you have to think things through awhile to get them right. Sometimes, the truth can take 20 years to tell. [image-Rozsa] [image caption- Rozsa] [end of Page two] Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Nameroff, Griffin 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 phony trial and a crucial issue: Justice Subject The topic of the resource False testimony Witnesses Description An account of the resource On January 21, 1996, the Miami Herald reported that Tony DiLisio admitted to lying in his testimony in the Spaziano trial twenty years prior. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Proscio, Tony Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Proscio, Tony. "A phony trial and a crucial issue: Justice." Miami Herald, January 21, 1996, C1. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-01-21 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Language A language of the resource English Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 JPGs 300DPI Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Miami, FL https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/9783325eace82d08c066646463efc24d.jpg ab805ab5346656da0f8538a560548c39 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/9450cd903fa816ea43fc268a3a5aa954.jpg 604a567325862ad567f523abd5714dd3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [title] Judge Orders Retrial of Condemned Man [author] By BRYAN K. MARQUARD: Valley News Staff Writer [subtext] The decision could mean the Joseph Spaziano will leave Death Row alive, rather than end his more than 20-year stint with a walk to Florida’s electric chair. [image—Joe Spaziano] [image caption] Joe Spaziano listens as his attorneys argue for a new trial in his 1976 murder case during the first day of a hearing in Sanford, Fla., on Jan. 8. This week, a judge ordered a new trial for the former Outlaws gang member after ruling a key witness lied to the 1976 trial jury. A Florida judge has issued a stern opinion ordering a new murder trial for a death row inmate whose longtime attorney and friend teachers at Vermont Law School. The decision could mean that Joseph Spaziano will leave Death Row alive, rather than end his more than 20-year stint with a walk to Old Sparky—the nickname for Florida’s electric chair. Spaziano’s case was Michael Mello’s first assignment when he joined the Florida Public Defender’s office in the early 1980s. He continued to work on his client’s Death Row appeals after joining the law school faculty—even when a showdown with the Florida Supreme Court last fall resulted in the justices removing his from the case. “I feel great,” Mello said yesterday in an assessment that was echoed by one of the three lawyers who argues the condemned man’s case during an evidentiary hearing in Sanford, Fla., earlier this month. “It’s great news,” said Elyse Runzow, one of 11 students in Mello’s capital punishment seminar at Vermont Law School last fall that, as a class project, worked on two petitions that Mello filed with the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court unanimously reject those petitions earlier this month. The Florida circuit court judge issued the ruling Monday, a day before the 20th anniversary of the murder conviction that sent Spaziano to Death Row, where he has survived five death warrants signed during the administrations of three Florida governors. The ruling that vacated the murder conviction came after a hearing that was prompted in part by a Miami Herald interview last June with Anthony DiLisio, the key witness in the case. DiLisio told the Herald—and testified in the hearing this month—that he lied more than 20 years ago when he said Spaziano had taken him to a dump in a rural area to show him the mutilated bodies of two women he had murdered. In 1976, DiLisio was a troubled teenager in a juvenile facility, and he recalled the encounter only after two sessions of hypnosis. “In the United States of America every person, no matter how unsavory, is entitled to due process of law and a fair trial. The defendant received neither,” Judge O.H. Eaton Jr. wrote in an eight-page ruling. “The validity of the verdict in this case rests upon the testimony of an admitted perjurer who had every reason to fabricate a story which he hoped would be believed.” Spaziano, who is on Death Row at the Union Correctional Institution in Union County, Fla., told the Herald Monday, “I’ve been trying to tell people all this time that the kid lied. I’m so happy people finally believe me.” Spaziano, who was known in the 1970s by his nickname, Crazy Joe, was a member of the Outlaws motorcycle gang when he was convicted of murdering Laura Harberts, a 18-year-old hospital clerk. The judge also wrote that DiLisio’s recantation “would probably produce a different result on retrial.” Tom Hastings, an assistant state attorney [end of page one] [beginning of page two] who was the lead prosecutor during the hearing, did not return calls seeking a comment. But he told the Herald Monday that it’s likely the state will appeal the decision. Gregg Thomas, one of the three lawyers representing Spaziano in the hearing this month, said in an interview yesterday that he believes the judge’s decision “is almost totally unassailable. . . . I think it would make an appeal very difficult.” He also predicted that the state would not attempt to retry Spaziano on the murder charge. Regardless of what the state decides to do, Spaziano will remain in jail for now. A few months before being convicted of murder in 1976, he was sentenced to life in prison for the brutal rape and assault of a 16-year-old girl. Spaziano has said he did not commit that crime either, and Mello is pushing for another court battle in an attempt to win freedom for his client, who was notified of the stay of execution on his fifth death warrant last September on his 50th birthday. But those battles are for another time. Yesterday, those involved with Spaziano’s defense were in a congratulatory mood. Two of the three attorneys who represented him in the hearing have praised the actions of Mello, who, in a dangerous game of brinkmanship, defied a Florida Supreme Court order to attend a hearing last fall. The move earned him the enmity of the court, but bought Spaziano the few extra months necessary for a legal team to get things in order for this month’s hearing. “But for your courage and fortitude, which were evidenced in your 1995 actions on behalf of Mr. Spaziano, there is no question that he would be dead today,” James Russ, one of Spaziano’s attorneys, wrote in a letter to Mello dated last Friday. “I write to thank you for the courageous efforts you made on his behalf, in the face of criticism by both the Florida Supreme Court and the legal profession.” “Michael Mello is responsible for Joe Spaziano being alive,” Thomas said in the telephone interview yesterday. “I’ve never been prouder of a lawyer in my life.” “If you’re measuring our contributions next to Michael’s contributions, ours pales in comparison,” he said. Thomas said several lawyers from his firm—Holland and Knight, the largest firm in Florida—worked through what would have been their Christmas vacation to prepare for Spaziano’s hearing. “Our Christmas present came yesterday,” he said with a chuckle. Among those who were elated over the ruling was Rose Spaziano, the defendant’s mother, who said she expected the judge would order a retrial. “I was hoping for a complete dismissal, but a retrial’s OK,” she said. “I’m hoping that things will go Joe’s way for a change.” She had not heard from her son yesterday, but said she was expecting a call, and added that he looked “real good” during the hearing. “He smiled at me,” she said. “He’s in good spirits.” Marynoel Spaziano was not quite 5 years old when her father was sent to Death Row. Yesterday, while shushing one of her father’s three grandchildren, she said she was happy about the judge’s ruling. Joseph Spaziano has seen two of his grandchildren once, she said. He was kept in handcuffs during the in-person meeting, which was allowed as he neared the execution date for one of his five death warrants. Also cheered by the news was longtime death penalty opponent Mike Farrell, the actors whose credits include he TV show M*A*S*H. He was active in a petition drive calling for a retrial for Spaziano. He said yesterday that Spaziano’s case “added elements” to the anti-death penalty crusade that would “make it abundantly clear to people that it doesn’t work, if you pay attention to the specifics.” He said he plans to spread the word about the case and “use this experience to help inform people about the ugly realities” of the death penalty. “I have profited enormously from this experience, just from the perspective of a human being,” he said of his work in cases such as Spaziano’s. “When we succeed in ending this, we will be a better nation for it.” Mello said the biggest hero in the Spaziano case may be the judge who issued the ruling, because the seat on the bench is an elected position. “From a political standpoint, from a personal standpoint, the only fair characterization of this decision . . . is extraordinarily courageous,” he said. “His local newspaper (the Orlando Sentinel) has been frothing at the mouth over this. All of the local TV stations have frothing over this.” The decision was also courageous “in terms of judicial politics,” Mello said, given that Spaziano’s attempts to secure a retrial or dismissal have failed when his case argued before the Florida Supreme Court, U.S. District Court, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U. S. Supreme Court. “This took guts,” Mello said. “You never know where the heroes are going to come from.” [end of page two] 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 Judge Orders Retrial of Condemned Man Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource MARQUARD, BRYAN K Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Newspaper Language A language of the resource English Description An account of the resource Could Joseph Spaziano leave Death Row alive or will he end his twenty year stint with a walk to Florida's electric chair? 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 1996-01-24 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/b59d847eca13727f615efbcff67a6258.jpg db1455a3b1a99bb6def418c74bc0ac03 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document For a few days last month, it looked as if Joe Spaziano had finally reached the high road to freedom. Potholes have developed. Let me update the story. On Aug. 21, 1973, police in Seminole County were led to a county dump. There they found the mutilated bodies of Laura Lynn Hartberts and another young woman. Two years passed. No leads. No suspects. No evidence. Then the authorities learned of a 16-year-old who wanted to talk. The kid had run away from a drug treatment center in a stolen car, and maybe he would strike a deal. This was Tony DiLisio. He had a bizarre story to tell. Indeed, he had several bizarre stories to tell, each of them contradicting details of the one before. The gist of it was that "Crazy Joe" Spaziano had taken him to the dump, pointed out the bodies, and claimed responsibility for the apparent murders. Young Tony's story was not all that convincing, but the cops were patient. They brought in a hypnotist. Tony obediently "remembered" all sorts of things. It was shaky evidence, but it was all the state had. Thus the Harberts' murder case went to trial in January 1976 before Judge Robert McGregor. At a pretrial hearing, the trial prosecutor made no bones about his case. "If we can't get in the testimony of Tony DiLisio, we'd absolutely have no case here whatsoever." Counsel repeated that admission in closing argument to the jury: "If you don't believe DiLIsio, then find the defendant not guilty in five minutes." As it later transpired, at least one juror had grave doubts about DiLisio, but the jury's verdict was guilty - with a recommendation for life imprisonment. Judge McGregor overruled the jury and sentenced Spaziano to death. Years passed. Appeals went up and down. Five times the governor set a date for execution. A lawyer who became obsessed with the case, Michael Mello, refused to give up. Six months ago the break came. DiLisio confessed that his testimony was a lie. He had fingered Spaziano to please his domineering father, who had reason to hate Crazy Joe. Florida's Supreme Court remanded the case for further proceedings on the newly discovered evidence. Now the good news: On Jan. 23, Judge O. H. Eaton Jr. vacated the verdict of guilty, vacated the death sentence, and ordered a new trial to begin in March. The bad news is that the state is appealing to Judge Eaton's order to the Florida Supreme Court. Before all appeals are exhausted, months or years could pass. Judge Eaton's opinion amounts to a complete vindication of Mello's selfless labor, Said the judge: "The crucial testimony at the trial of this case in 1976 came from the mouth of Anthony DiLisio. It was he who provided the only evidence of the cause of death of the decedent and it was he who supplied the jury with the evidence connecting this tragic event to the defendant. Without his testimony, there simply is no corroborating evidence in the trial record that is sufficient to sustain the verdict. . . ." Judge Eaton sketched a sordid picture. Tony's father, Ralph DiLiso, abused his six children. Tony grew up on the wild side. He got heavily into drugs. Meanwhile his father, who owned a boat dealership, was having an affair with one of his employees known as "Keppy." Judge Eaton's opinion continued: "Keppy seduced Tony DiLisio when he was 15 and with whom he had frequent sexual intercourse for about two and one-half years. His father and Keppy ultimately married. DiLisio had sex with her for the last time on their wedding day. . . . "The defendant (Spaziano) worked at the marina. . . . Not surprisingly, Keppy began to have a sexual relationship with the defendant. Ralph DiLisio found out and became angry. At some point Keppy accused the defendant of raping her. It was about that time that Ralph DiLisio asked his son if the defendant had told him he mutilated women. DiLisio testified that the defendant never said anything like that to him. But the idea was planted in his mind." A chain of events led to the two sessions of hypnosis. Judge Eaton said the hypnotist "does not give the listener confidence in his abilities." One defense expert graded the hypnotist a "double F"; the other rated his skill at zero. "In the United States," Judge Eaton concluded, "every person, no matter how unsavory, is entitled to due process of law and a fair trial. The defendant received neither. The validity of the verdict in this case rests upon the testimony of an admitted perjurer who had every reason to fabricate a story which he hoped he would be believed. The courts of this country should not tolerate the deprivation of life or liberty under such circumstances. . . . The judgment and sentence cannot stand." 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. Snellings, Alyssa 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 One more detour on Spaziano's long road to freedom 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 Spaziano, Joe Mello, Michael Florida. Supreme Court Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kilpatrick, James J. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Kilpatrick James J. "One more detour on Spaziano's long road to freedom." Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 JPG 300 DPI Description An account of the resource Joe Spaziano was suspected and accused of the murder of two young women in 1973 as a result of the statement from Anthony DiLisio. https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/33ee5cd1dcec9d0fd9dfe8050747442a.jpg eee50c05e1711378e9303802b86017d2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The two Crazy Joes Subject The topic of the resource Spaziano, Joe Description An account of the resource Joe "Crazy Joe" Spaziano became a point of interest for two magazines: The H Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Barstow, David Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Barstow, David. "The two Crazy Joes." St. Petersburg Times, February, 1996. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-02-25 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 5 JPGS Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant St. Petersburg, FL Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Text Item Type Metadata https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/1227e9b787a87555970c8164277ab644.jpg a07efcdc14236e16f7a4adf302f39299 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/294137f3e8f0cdc3f6bc328be0c3bb87.jpg 8bffce3d3f823e98e2b269eff7945681 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/936ffa4a531b2c7ced6fad400516e0ba.jpg 36b4083ccae5a6940abf2528c3945be7 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/4a4e277632e9b3c12f99853da7851ec9.jpg 56bcecb7b7556a04e5850e5fc6c3a21e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [Page One] [Title] The two Crazy Joes [Photographs of Joseph Spaziano during his first trial and one of his appeals to court] [Caption] Two photographs, one man. As different as Joseph “Crazy Joe” Spaziano looks in these pictures is about as different as the coverage of his case in the Miami Herald and the Orlando Sentinel. [Page Two] [Column One] With the help of God and the Miami herald, we’ll cross the finish line together. And alive. And free. Attorney Michael Mello, in a letter to his client, death row inmate Joe Spaziano The Sentinel will write whatever it wants, and if another (death) warrant comes, your blood will be on their hands. Mello, in another letter to Spaziano Last summer, two newspapers—the Miami Herald and the Orlando Sentinel—set out to do the same thing. Each dedicated itself to finding The Truth in the case of Joseph “Crazy Joe” Spaziano, the Outlaw biker condemned to death 20 years ago for the murder of a young Orlando medical clerk. Each produced a stream of news stories based on standard reporting techniques: digging up records, tracking down witnesses, pumping sources, talking to key participants. But a strange thing happened on the trail to truth. In eight months of compelling coverage, as execution dates came and went, the two newspapers arrived at separate truths about Crazy Joe’s case, truths as incompatible as life and death. The Herald found in Spaziano a pathetic victim of injustice. The Sentinel found a “dead-eyed” rapist-killer. The Herald found shabby evidence, shaky witnesses and a lead detective who drove around the countryside in a squad car with a psychic holding a skull in her lap. The Sentinel described incriminating evidence, unshakable witnesses and a former Outlaw enforcer called Gatemouth who said Spaziano bragged that sex was best after a killing. The Herald found a guild-ridden prosecution witness who had motives to lie 20 years ago but now [End of First Column] [Beginning of Second Column] wanted to set the record straight? The Sentinel described the same witness as a troubled flake with reasons to spring forth with a bogus recantation. This extraordinary divergence was neatly summarized in headlines on editorials last month, when a judge ordered a new trial for Spaziano. The Herald: “Justice Awakens.” The Sentinel:”Justice Clearly Cheated.” How could two newspapers—both pro-death penalty and each committed to the truth—see the same case so differently? The coverage was shaped by forces unseen by readers. These newspapers pursued different questions and were driven by different ideas about the proper role of journalism. Their coverage was molded by ego and instinct. Stories were affected by reactions to what the other newspaper was writing, and by the manipulations of a few key sources. Coverage was even affected by one reporter’s premature delivery of a baby and another reporter’s childhood memories. The stakes were high: Either an innocent man was about to be executed, or a murderer was going to beat the system. “I think they were both zealously going after the truth, or what they perceived to be the truth,” says Ron Sachs, a former reporter who until recently was Gov. Lawton Chiles’ spokesman. ‘And I have no doubt in my mind that they were guided and motivated by pure altruism. That doesn’t mean they got closer to the truth. Both papers wrote accurate stories—factual stories. “But this was a classic example of how you can vigorously pursue a particular viewpoint and generate the facts to support your viewpoint. “The trouble is, at least one of these great newspapers is probably wrong.” Please see CRAZY JOE 8a [Heading] Crazy Joe from IA [Page Three] [First Column] Early last May, Michael Mello nervously dialed the number of Gene Miller, an editor at the Miami Herald. They knew each other by reputation alone. Mello teaches law in Vermont. He also represented death row inmates, including Spaziano. Mello usually avoided the media and confined his advocacy to the strict procedural rules that govern death penalty appeals. But this case was different. Of the 70 men he had represented on death row, Spaziano was the first Mello thought truly innocent. With appeals exhausted and the hour of execution drawing near, Mello decided to approach the Media. It was the first such phone call he says he had ever made. Gene Miller is a legend in journalism circles. He has built a career crusading against miscarriages of justice. His first Pulitzer Prize, in 1967, was for stories that cleared two convicts of murder they did not commit. His second Pulitzer, in 1976, came for reporting that led to the release and pardon of Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee, sentenced to death for murdering two Panhandle gas station attendants. Plenty of people want Miller to crusade for them, but he thinks most “innocent-man” claims are baseless. When Mello called and asked him to review Spaziano’s case, Miller agreed—expecting that he would take a quick look and toss it aside. But his interest surged when he saw Joe McCawley’s name in Mello’s records. McCawley was the discredited hypnotist who some say implanted false memories in a key witness in the Pitts and Lee case. Here he was again in the Spaziano case, and his role was even more prominent. Police had no eyewitnesses or physical evidence tying Spaziano to the murder of 8-year-old Laura Lynn Harberts. Her body left to rot in a dump, was too decomposed to even determine cause of death. The sole evidence linking Spaziano to the murder came from a troubled 17-year-old who, under McCawley’s hypnosis, said Spaziano had taken him to a dump to show off the body. The teenager, an Outlaw wannabe, also said Spaziano bragged of mutilating Herberts’ genitals with a knife while she was alive—testimony that sealed a death sentence for Spaziano. Miller asked Miami polygraph examiner Warren Holmes to read Spaziano’s trial transcripts. Holmes had worked with Miller in most of his big miscarriage-of-justice stories. Miller considers Homes “a man with a ruthlessly logical mind” and “a superb homicide interrogator.” Holmes told Miller it was obvious that the 17-year-old lied in his testimony. He didn’t even get basic details of the crime scene right. [End of First Column] [Beginning of Second Column] Without conducting a single interview, Miller decided Spaziano was probably innocent. He was appalled that testimony induced by hypnosis—a practice since barred from trials as unreliable—would be enough to send a man to the chair. Yes, the highest courts in the land had blessed the fairness of Spaziano’s trial, including the hypnosis. To Miller, that still didn’t make it right. In Miller’s aggressive brand of journalism, the reporter’s mission is to find the truth and then persuade others to do something about it. When the clock is ticking on a man’s life, that can mean stepping outside the ordinary boundaries of Joe Friday “just the facts, ma’am” journalism. It can mean taking a side and advocating a position. It can mean lobbying a governor in person (as he did for Pitts and Lee)m or lining up legal help for the condemned (as he did for Pitts and Lee and others). To those who say journalists should remain neutral and objective, he responds simply: “ A man’s life is at stake. I think I’m doing the right thing.” Miller had Mello write an impassioned opinion piece raising doubts about the Spaziano case. Miller edited the piece and arranged its simultaneous publication in Sunday editions of the Herald, the Sentinel and the St. Petersburg Times. Miller also urged other editors at the Herald to dispatch a reporter to investigate Spaziano’s case. They decided to focus on a question that already had all but settled in their own minds: Did Spaziano get a fair trial? . . . Reporter Lori Rozsa has never covered an execution. Working out of Herald’s Palm Beach bureau, she writes mainly about the environment. When Gov. Chiles scheduled Spaziano’s execution for June 27, 1995, Rozsa’s editors asked if she had any qualms about witnessing an execution. She didn’t. She believes the Ted Bundys of the world probably deserve to die. Like Miller, Rozsa felt strong misgivings as she read through the trial records. The key to the case was the 17-year-old witness, Tony DiLisio. The prosecutor admitted he didn’t have a case without him. Rozsa, 35, flew to Pensacola to interview DiLisio. Nobody was home the first two times she visited. The third time he shut the door on her foot and threatened to call 911. The fourth time he said a few words then cut her short. Rozsa didn’t give up. On her fifth try, DiLisio began to talk. At first, he said he couldn’t remember a thing about the case. The longer he talked, the closer he edged toward saying his trial testimony had been a lie. He called hypnosis “witchcraft.” He said he was just a scared, confused kid. He said Spaziano never took him to the dump to see a body. [End of Second Column] [Beginning of Third Column] He said the execution should be halted. Rozsa’s gut told her DiLisio was being truthful. To her, it was significant that he had been so reluctant to talk. After the interview, Rozsa called Mello from her hotel. “She couldn’t believe it and I couldn’t believe it,” Mello recalls.” She was on cloud five or six.” Until then, Rozsa had remained skeptic about Spaziano’s claim of innocence. DiLisio’s recantation convinced her Spaziano was an innocent victim of an outrageous miscarriage of justice. “That sealed it for me,” she says. . . . Rozsa’s story describing DiLisio’s recantation ran on page one of the Herald on June 11. Remember, the murder occurred not in Miami, but near Orlando. As sometimes happens when newspapers get scooped in their own back yard, the Orlando Sentinel was slow to react to the story. The governor was not. He immediately asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate. Days later, the Sentinel ran a short Associated Press story about the FDLE investigation. The story was buried inside the paper. When Chiles stayed Spaziano’s execution, the Sentinel finally had its own reporter write a story. In it, he included references to the Herald’s work. His editors at the Sentinel wanted to cut out any references to other newspapers. “They didn’t want to admit that the story got by us,” recalls the reporter, Michael Griffin, the Sentinel’s Tallahassee bureau chief. Griffin was upset with his newspaper. He had asked permission to pursue the Spaziano case after the Sentinel published Mello’s opinion article. “I read that and thought,’Holy Christ, this guy could be innocent,’” he says. His editors put him off, and the Spaziano story languished in another bureau of the newspaper. When Griffin read Rozsa’s page one story about DiLisio’s recantation, he thought,” This should have been our story. This is our story.” Griffin’s editors belatedly agreed and quickly threw a platoon of eight reporters at the story. But their mission was shaped by journalism principles far different from the ones guiding the Herald. “You don’t have an opinion in this case,” Sentinel editor John Haile told his news staff. Haile considered it “terribly presumptuous” for any reporter to judge the fairness of a 20-year-old trial and decades of subsequent appeals. “I’m not sure where we are vested with this authority to say,’We know better than you,’” Haile says. He didn’t want his reporters crusading. Spaziano deserved justice, but so did the [End of Page Three] [Beginning of Page Four] [First Column] Victim, Laura Harberts. “We didn’t set out to try and free anybody; we didn’t set out to try and convict anybody,” Haile says. “A reporter’s job is to go out and find the truth, whatever that may be. The Herald began with the question: Did Spaziano receive a fair trial? The Sentinel’s editors decided to focus narrowly on a different question: Is Tony DiLisio telling the truth now? Like Lori Rozsa before him, Michael Griffin went to Pensacola to interview DiLisio. But where Rozsa left DiLisio’s home certain his recantation was genuine, Griffin left his interview equally certain that DiLisio was lying. “I caught the guy in the first 15 minutes in a half-dozen lies,” Griffin recalls. DiLisio said he had been “Christian and clean” for more than a decade. Griffin knew DiLisio had been arrested twice for DUI, and twice more for hitting a former girlfriend. Rozsa’s and Griffin’s opposite impressions of DiLisio resulted in distinctively different coverage. Believing DiLisio’s recantation was bogus, Griffin and other Sentinel reporters wrote stories tearing into his credibility now. They explored his recent brushes with the law. They quoted friends and relatives who said DiLisio is a compulsive liar—but that he was telling the truth 20 years ago. Sentinel reporters emphasized DiLisio’s motives to lie now—possible fear of the Outlaws, maybe to cash in with tabloid TV. They dissected inconsistencies in his current story. They made not mention of the hypnosis checkered past. Certain DiLisio’s recantation was real, Rozsa and other Herald reporters wrote stories ripping into DiLisio’s credibility 20 years ago. They described him as a desperate, drugged-out teenager. They quoted friends and relatives who said DiLisio was a compulsive liar—but that he is telling the truth now. Herald reporters emphasized DiLisio’s motives to lie then—because Spaziano had supposedly raped DiLisio’s stepmother, because he wanted to please the police, because his father told him to. They dissected inconsistencies in his testimony from 20 years ago. They barely mentioned DiLisio’s recent troubles with the law. Rozsa would see Sentinel stories and wonder,” Are they reading the same stuff as me?” Griffin was no less dumbfounded by the Herald. “For the life of me I cannot understand how you can look at the same amount of material that we both looked at and come back with such widely different takes on this.” At times, Griffin felt he had to set the record straight. He thought the Herald painted too rosy a picture of Spaziano and his fellow Outlaws. Griffin, 34, grew up in Orlando, and he remembered the fearsome reputation of the local Outlaws in the 70s. There were tales of gang rapes and killings, and he recalled his parents keep- [End of Column One] [Beginning of Column Two] -ing him inside at night when women’s bodies began turning up in local dumps. After Spaziano was arrested for one of the “dump murders,” the newspapers were filled with Spaziano’s violent exploits. When Griffin wrote that Spaziano lived “a misfit’s life of spontaneous brutality and murder,” he says he was trying to counter the Herald’s depiction of Crazy Joe as a clownish charmer—”the most popular guy on death row.” “I was aiming that at his supporters, and I include the Miami Herald in that,” he says. On Aug. 24, 1995, Gov. Chiles reset Spaziano’s execution date. He said FDLE investigators turned up new evidence of Spaziano’s guilt, including witnesses who said DiLisio talked of seeing a body at the dump long before he talked to police and the hypnotist. The Sentinel had the story first. “It was a bad, bad day when Chiles signed that death warrant,” Rozsa recalls. She was upset at being scooped, of course. More deeply, she was upset that Spaziano seemed destined for the chair. Obviously I haven’t done my job,” she thought. If it came to it, she decided, she would not attend the execution. She could not bear to watch the electrocution of a man she believed to be innocent. . . . In politics, they say, perception can become reality. The same can hold true for journalism. In the Spaziano case, perceptions that the newspapers were biased only widened the split in the coverage. Spaziano’s attorney, Michael Mello, had assumed early on that the Sentinel would largely echo the Herald’s coverage, and he was thrilled when Griffin first called him about the case. Mello offered to open up his records to the newspaper. His strategy for saving Spaziano depended on generating sympathetic coverage that would put pressure on Chiles. When the Sentinel stories began to tail spin unfavorable to his client, Mello worried his strategy had backfired. The way he figured, the Sentinel was giving Chiles political cover to execute Spaziano. In response, Mello publicly labeled the Sentinel an “accomplice to murder.” He stopped taking Sentinel phone calls. He withdrew his offer to allow them full access to his files. He instructed Spaziano not to talk to the Sentinel. Tony DiLisio also clammed up on the Sentinel. The Herald—whom Mello referred to as his “investigative partner”—continued to get red-carpet treatment. Another key source was John Gordy, the FDLE agent in charge of the governor’s investigation into the Spaziano case. Early on, he spoke several times with Lori Rozsa. She impressed Gordy as a reporter who [End of Second Column] [Beginning of Second Column] Wanted to uncover what was “righteous and real.” But when Rozsa wrote a page one story about flaws and errors in Gordy’s investigation, Gordy felt betrayed. He and other law enforcement sources began to view Rozsa and the Herald as an extension of Spaziano’s defense team. “We ended our relationship,” he says. Gordy did not, however, end his relationship with the Sentinel. If anything, Gordy talked even more openly with Sentinel reporters. He fed them information he hoped would “set the record straight. One Sentinel story reported that DiLisio’s attorney declined comment, followed by this small dig: “He and DiLisio then walked down the street with a Miami Herald reporter, who first reported DiLisio’s recantation in June.” With key sources taking sides, perception became reality. “If you’re only hearing one side of the story, it’s kind of hard to be objective and balanced,” Griffin says. Editors and reporters at both papers say they strived to keep their stories balanced and their minds open. Sometimes fate interfered. Having written so much about Spaziano and DiLisio, Rozsa planned to write a profile of the victim, Laura Harbert. But Rozsa was pregnant, and her baby came several weeks early; the Harberts profile was scratched. To the discomfort of the reporters, both newspapers fueled perceptions of bias—and not just with their editorials (Herald—free him; Sentinel—fry him.) The Herald helped line up one of the state’s best law firms to represent Spaziano for free. And Gene Miller wrote a several page letter to Ron Sachs, the governor press secretary, explaining “why I think the state is very close to executing a man who in all probability is innocent.” In the letter, Miller offered to make Rozsa available to the governor, even providing her home number. (“I was wondering why he did that,” Rozsa says.) The Sentinel, on the other hand, ran this page one banner headline last month, on the first day of a crucial court hearing to decide whether Spaziano should get a new trial: “Former Outlaw: Spaziano Enjoyed Killing.” (Michael Griffin cringed when he saw that. “The headline,” he says,”was just way over the top.”) . . . In the Herald newsroom, some suspected the Sentinel of climbing into bed with the governor’s office to knock down [End of Fourth Page] [Beginning of Fifth Page] [Heading] At the Miami Herald [Photograph of Gene Miller] Gene Miller, a Miami Herald editor, had won two Pulitzer Prizes crusading against unfair convictions. [Photograph of Lori Rozsa] Herald reporter Lori Rozsa wasn’t sure if Spaziano was innocent until after the state’s star witness told her his trial testimony was a lie. [Heading] The witness [Photograph of Tony Dilisio] Tony Dilisio testified in 1976 that Spaziano showed him the victim’s body; 20 years later, he took it all back after Rozsa knocked on his door. [Heading] At the Orlando Sentinel [Photograph of John Haile] Sentinel editor John Haile didn’t want his reporters trying to judge whether Spaziano received a fair trial 20 years ago. [Photograph of Michael Griffin] Reporter Michael Griffin says he has never worked harder on a story. “I’m proud of the newspaper, proud of the way we did this story.” [Column One] their findings. What better what ease the sting of being scooped on your home turf? At the Sentinel, some suspected the Herald of climbing into bed with Spaziano’s attorneys. What better way to win a Pulitzer Prize than to get a guy off death row? People at the Herald took offense when a Sentinel reporter asked one of their writers,” Has the Herald lost its objectivity on the story?” Likewise, some at the Sentinel were angered by a letter Gene Miller wrote to the editor of the Sentinel’s editorial page, an old friend of Miller’s. Miller argued for Spaziano’s innocence and he included copies of the Herald’s coverage. In the Sentinel newsroom, Miller’s letter was taken as arrogance and insult. As if they hadn’t been reading the Herald’s coverage! Years ago, in college, Michael Griffin was an enthusiastic proponent of the death penalty. Then he read Invitation to a Lynching, Gene Miller’s 1976 book about the Pitts and Lee case. The book left him far more skeptical of the death penalty, though not quite an opponent. It also made him an admirer of Miller and his brand of crusading journalism. Covering the Spaziano story has changed Griffin’s mind—about Miller and the death penalty. “I am 100 percent opposed to the death penalty,” he says. How can the ultimate punishment possibly be fair if it is subject to the whims and judgments of newspapers? “Cops don’t matter, prosecutors don’t matter, judges don’t matter, juries don’t matter. Gene Miller is all that matters,” Griffin says bitterly. “He’s gonna sit back 20 years later and decide this guy is innocent.” So which newspaper got it right? Only Spaziano knows for sure. Last month a judge granted him a new trial. “In the United States of America every person, no matter how unsavory, is entitled to due process of the law and a fair trial,” the judge ruled. “The defendant received neither.” Prosecutors are appealing. It could be months before that appeal is resolved, and even longer if a jury ever gets a chance to sort through this tangled case. If and when that happens, count on one thing. The Herald and the Sentinel will be there, each in pursuit of the truth. Times researchers Kitty Bennett and Carolyn Hardnett contributed to this story. [End of Article] Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Barstow, David Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Debes, Elizabeth 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 The two Crazy Joes Subject The topic of the resource Spaziano, Crazy Joe Description An account of the resource As two newspapers, the Herald and the Sentinel, cover the same story of Joseph "Crazy Joe" Spaziano, they report two completely different stories. David Barstow evaluates why these two reliable newspapers published two different views of the case, as well as asking the question of which one was correct in the end. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Barstow, David Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Barstow, David. "The two Crazy Joes." St. Petersburg Times, February, 1996. 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 02-25-1996 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 5 JPGS Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant St. Petersburg, FL "Crazy Joe" Spaziano 1995 Against Execution court cases Court decisions and opinions. criminal defense death penalty Florida capital sentencing statute Florida death penalty Florida Death Row Florida newspapers Gene Miller newspaper The Herald The Sentinel https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/4678670355034aae98fc81d4b2c9536a.jpg d5061fd592d2a705e48d158d59e0002b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [Author] Colman McCarthy [Title] States Streamline Machinery of Death Last year rests as a record-setting year for state-sanctioned homicides: 56 men executed at a cost estimated by Duke University researchers at $2.1 million per death. Jan 25 and 26 are likely to go into the books also: successive days on which one state hanged a man by rope and another state killed with bullets. Both executions were well reported, given the novelty of gallows and firing squads at a time when legislatures are increasingly sanctioning drugging people to death. Lethal injection has a softness to it, almost a cruelty-free medical aura, which allows state governments to have it both ways: to kill humanely. The Delaware hanging of Billy Bailey and the shooting 26 hours later of John Albert Taylor in Utah lacked the ordinariness that might have allowed these two executions to pass unnoticed beyond prison walls. The methods of killing-- not the killing itself-- caused uneasiness among politicians in both states. Bailey and Taylor could have chosen to go quietly, lying down on a gurney and having a vein opened. Instead, they rejected taking up the states' option of a lethal drug. As a result, international television crews along with major U.S. networks poured into the remote prison towns of Smyrna, Del., and Point of the Mountain, Utah. The power of TV visuals was at work. How often does a chance come along to get footage of a well- constructed wooden gallows and a trapdoor swinging open in a dry run for the cameras? Or to film the firing squad room and its sandbag-supported death chair complete with a spill device to catch the blood? The day before these two executions, Virginia executed a man by lethal injection. This was almost a non-story, except that death chamber technicians needed 30 minutes to locate a suitable vein, finally settling for one just above the foot. It is not likely that executioners in Delaware and Utah will earn this much international and national publicity again. Delaware switched to lethal injection in 1986 but Bailey, sentenced before then, rejected the choice. In Utah, politicians have introduced a bill to ban the firing squad for future death sentences. Many states are giving condemned prisoners choices in dying. Capital punishment advocates who see this as an unwarranted turn toward mercy-- why give these heinous murderers a choice?-- need not be alarmed. Legislatures aren't getting soft, they're getting practical. First, they are making capital punishment more palatable, should a clamor arise that death by hanging, shooting, electrocution or gassing is barbaric and bad for the state's image. Second, and far more important, is that the offering of choices protects the state against spending still more money in legal expenses. Death penalty sentencing is a post-conviction procedure, akin to another trial with full deliberations and arguments. In most states, juries decide whether murderers deserve death. In some, judges rule. In a few, judges, usually running for reelection, can override juries that reject a capital sentence. If those now on death row were not given choices they would have a legal opening to demand a new sentencing trial. Their reasoned argument would be: I was sentenced to die one way and now the rules are changing and I am forced to die another way. I should have another sentencing trial. Fearing that appeals courts might agree, states end-run this by offering a choice: The condemned are not being forced to accept another method; the first one remains available. Trail judges and prosecutors abhor new trials, whether on questions of guilt or sentencing. Evidence not originally available-- either because inexperienced defense lawyers didn't know how to gather it or because it was suppressed by prosecutors-- often has a way of showing up years later. Days before the Delaware and Utah executions, Joseph Spaziano, a Florida death row inmate for nearly 20 years, had one of the rarest of legal victories. A Florida circuit court, vacating both hid conviction and sentence, ordered a new trial. A combination of nonjudicial forces-- the doggedness of Spaziano's attorneys, including Prof. Michael Mello of the Vermont Law School, and reporters from the Miami Herald-- persistently presented evidence of grave doubts of the condemned man's guilt. It was said: Well, the system worked. In fact, it was lawyers and reporters who worked. The legal system did its powerful best to kill. Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan 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. Kabre, Timbila 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 States Streamline Machinery of Death Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Language A language of the resource English Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-02-06 Description An account of the resource After the deaths of Billy Bailey and John Albert Taylor, states are being faced with how to go about offering the most humane capital punishment. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McCarthy, Colman Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived McCarthy, Colman. "States Streamline Machinery of Death." The Washington Post, February 6, 1996. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 JPG 300 DPI Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Smyrna, Delaware Point of the Mountain, Utah. Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment--United States Billy Bailey capital punishment John Albert Taylor Joseph Spaziano Michael Mello https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/204aed956b04804aada2a76518a7594f.jpg 6d0f1d4eca027e7ddfc11a75371898cd https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/985c07f1d81966dff36be5a0a9321b10.jpg 5753edd614da6695a4a9284d8023a313 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/bda501f94636f18686148f9b4d577816.jpg 7fd600142c831c906e40f90e066cf1d2 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/87dc1ec7990b098cbfa3750c162f3e24.jpg 50139152ca09f8cdf361567711e13a03 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/fe87881528d5c2a87742ed67bbeead64.jpg b1b0ad0b2971185cd39d9475f4a24947 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/01131e76dc7cd734ab4dcf2defb1f6fc.jpg b061491d8aaf4db254df82ef6d548499 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/e4ce7eb943d1d38ec9b311c45bad3e6a.jpg 0ea421190d0883c842cc83b1bf2e59a7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [title]Executing Justice [title] [subtitle] Vermont Law School Professor Gives Death Row Inmate New Lease on Life [subtitle] [Image of Michael Mello]<o:p></o:p> [Caption] Michael Mello sits in his home office in Wilder surrounded by paperwork he has prepared in the case of Florida inmate Joseph Spaziano and mementos from his life as a death-penalty lawyer and professor. [Caption] They call his client "Crazy Joe" Spaziano. Vermont Law School Professor Michael Mello calls him a friend. He also calls him innocent. For more than a dozen years, ever since he began arguing Spaziano's case as a fledgling public defender, Mello has fought to bring those claims of innocence to light. [Images of Spaziano and Mello] [Caption] Spaziano is shown in a family snapshot (left) before his imprisonment. A later photo (right) shows an older Spaziano in a Florida prison. Spaziano, an artist and longtime member of a motorcycle gang, gave this oil painting to Mello (below) about a decade ago. [Caption]  The case went before 26 different judges and was played out in at least 17 different court hearings. "Not a single judge in a single court ever took a look at the issue of evidence," Mello said. Until this fall. Now, the case Mello calls "too bizarre to work as fiction" may finally be drawing toward an end. Spaziano was recently granted a new trial after nearly two decades on Florida's death row. Sitting on a couch in his Wilder home, clad in a black jersey and jeans, Mello chain-smoked his way through a handful of Camel cigarettes as he told Spaziano's story. The narration rolled his tongue with easy familiarity as he pulled through a carved cigarette holder. Joseph Spaziano, now 50, was born into a working-class Italian family in upstate New York. His "crazy" behavior came, in part, from permanent brain damage he suffered after being hit by a truck at the age of 19. Originally a member of the Hell's Angels, Spaziano joined and ultimately became president of a different gang, called the Outlaws, after moving to Florida as a young man. It was there, in 1973, that an 18-year-old Orlando hospital clerk named Laura Lynn Harberts disappeared. Her decomposed body was found several weeks later in a Seminole County dump. Two years after Harberts' death, police turned their sights on Spaziano, who had a string of criminal convictions on his record- including a recent rape. Spaziano was indicted in September 1975, and convicted at trial in early 1976. No physical evidence ever linked Spaziano to the crime. The key witness, Tony DiLisio, was a teenager who had to be put under hypnosis repeatedly before recalling, in increasing detail, incriminating statements Spaziano allegedly made about the killing. Jurors did not hear about the hypnosis, but reportedly were still concerned about DiLisio's reliability and hence recommended a life sentence. The judge, noting the rape conviction on Spaziano's record, overrode the jury's wishes and gave Spaziano death. Later, the Florida Supreme Court would decide hypnosis was not a reliable way to produce evidence in a case. The ruling came too late for Spaziano. It also was revealed after trial that prosecutors knew of other evidence pointing suspicion away from Spaziano, including a witness who tied a different suspect to the scene of the murder- a man who had failed several lie-detector tests during the investigation. Despite that and more, Florida has five times tried to send Spaziano to the electric chair. If not for Mello, he would probably already be dead. Choosing A Path<o:p></o:p> Mello, now 38, grew up in Virginia, where he saw the play "Inherit the Wind" in high school and was inspired toward a career as either a journalist or a lawyer. Fearing his writing skills would not support the former, Mello said, he pursued a law degree, graduating from the University of Virginia in 1982. His first job turned out to be the one that piqued his interest in capital punishment. Serving as one of the three law clerks for Judge Robert Vance of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Alabama, Mello found himself assigned to review the judge's capital punishment cases. Mello said he was "a little disappointed" in the assignment "for about the first 20 minutes." Then, he said, he read into the pile and discovered that many death-penalty appeals raise constitutional issues. "By the end of that afternoon I was delighted I was going to be Vance's 'death clerk'," he said. One case in particular from that time period haunts him, Mello said. Ivan Ray Stanley was a retarded man on death row in Georgia of being the right-hand man in "a fairly hideous crime," Mello said. Stanley's co-defendant also appealed but had a better lawyer. When the scales of justice weighed out, Stanley went to his death. His co-defendant remained on death row. "I finished my clerkship with a good deal of liberal guilt not only for my role in the Stanley case but for death penalty cases in general," Mello said. Although he had a lucrative job offer from a private firm, Mello remained interested in trying his hand at death penalty cases in general," Mello said. Although he had a lucrative job offer from a private firm, Mello remained interested in trying his hand at death penalty cases in general," Mello said. Although he had a lucrative jon offer firm a private firm, Mello remained interested in trying his hand at death penalty work. He took a detour from his intended career path and signed on as a public defender in West Palm Beach, Fla., handling death-row appeals for that region. Mello's first death penalty filing was a 1983 legal brief to the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to decide whether it was right for the judge to override the jury's recommended sentence in Spaziano's case. The brief does not bear Mello's name because he had not yet passed the bar examination.  The Supreme Court ruled against Spaziano on the issue, but Mello then began to dig into the case in earnest, meeting with Spaziano's lawyers, speaking with DiLisio and reviewing the evidence presented at trial. At that point, he and his client had not met face-to-face. They first did so in the summer of 1984. In preparation, Mello read the Hunter S. Thompson book "Hell's Angels" to prepare for what he might find. He jokingly described the pair's first Justice <o:p></o:p> Continued from Page 19<o:p></o:p> could avoid the June death warrant." In the face of the new evidence, Chiles stayed the execution for two weeks and ordered an internal law enforcement investigation of DiLisio's claims, The investigation, which the governor then sealed, concluded that DiLisio's change of heart was not reliable. The delay, however, had lasted until the start of the state Supreme Court's summer break, staving off a new execution order until fall. It also gave the Miami Herald time to dig further into the case. “Then they started coming up with all sorts of stuff," Mello said. "Watching a major, big-city newspaper with the resources to investigate the case the way I always wished I had the resources to investigate was a pleasure for me to watch," he said. Media interest in the case snowballed. It was featured, among other places, in newspapers throughout Florida, became the topic of syndicated columns, reports in The Nation, The New Republic, The Economist and a segment of the ABC nightly news. When the Florida Supreme Court returned from summer break in late August, Spaziano's fifth death warrant came out. Mello filed for a new stay of execution. The Supreme Court gave Spaziano a stay on his 50th birthday-Sept. 12. It also ordered a hearing in the case. Mello balked, however, at the fact that he had only days to prepare. He also had just maxed out his last credit card- part of an estimated $15,000 in out-of-pocket expenses he said he had spent on the case. In a brash letter to the court, he refused to go forward. "There was no way on earth I could be ready." The court took his refusal as his resignation from the case. Mello enlisted a private firm to defend Spaziano, who in turn signed on an experienced criminal defense lawyer. The new defense team was allowed more time to prepare for the hearing. After six days of testimony in January, Spaziano won his new trial- a decision Mello had felt was "virtually impossible" so late in the game. Circuit Judge O. H. Eaton Jr. wrote in his opinion that he found DiLisio's recantation credible, and added that without DiLisio's original testimony, "there simply  is no corroborating evidence in the trail record that is sufficient to sustain the verdict." The judge ordered a new trial to begin in late March.  That date, however, has been postponed while prosecutors appeal the new trail order, Mello said. They contend DiLisio has nothing to lose by changing  his story now and is simply seeking publicity. Meanwhile, Spaziano has been moved off of death row and back into the general prison population for the first time since his sentencing. He is no longer confined to a cell most of the day, can place telephone calls more easily and has more ready access to art supplies for cartooning, his hobby and talent.   What Spaziano most wanted Mello to know, however, when he first called, was that he was surrounded as they spoke by seven members of the Outlaws who would protect him in prison.  Mello said Spaziano's ties to the biker group had provided a continuity that had "kept him going."  "He loves those people... and the ones I've gotten to know love him too." In fact, Spaziano had won permission to wear the club's T-shirt if his execution was carried out in the fall. Spaziano has seen 21 people on Florida's death row killed since executions resumed in 1977. "Two or three" of those were friends, according to Mello. He has a 23-year-old daughter and three grandchildren who can't remember when he was not in jail. Question the System Meanwhile, the Vermont lawyer who said Spaziano "is fond of saying that he and I grew up together" has reached a milestone in his own career. He has decided that Spaziano's case will not only be his first death penalty appeal but also his last. "To function efficiently as a defense lawyer in capital punishment as a legal system you need to have more faith and more trust in the judiciary  and the prosecution and the others in the legal system than I have after working on the Joe Spaziano case," Mello said. "The system would have killed Spaziano in a heartbeat. ...If that's how the system treats people who are innocent, then that isn't a system I can continue to participate in good faith." "Lots of people have said to me, "The system finally worked,' and that is so wrong, because the system didn't work-the legal system was forced, kicking and screaming every minute of the way, into doing right in this case," Mello said. Mello said he planned to engage in what he called "conscientious abstention." He will continue to write and speak about death penalty issues, as well as teach a death penalty seminar as part of his course load at the law school. Students in his fall 1995 seminar helped prepare U.S. Supreme Court appeals in Spaziano's case. His book on the capital punishment dissents of U.S. Supreme Court Justices Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan is due out soon. Two other manuscripts are in the works, and he is toying with writing a book about Spaziano's case. "It's a hell of a story," he said. The next step for Spaziano, Mello said, is an appeal of his prior rape conviction- which he contends was also falsely pinned on his client. The same Florida lawyer who handled the January hearing has agreed to take the lead in the rape case as well. If that succeeds along with the murder appeal, Spaziano could be released from prison. Mello said he was considering what would happen to Spaziano then, and had come up with an answer. He gestures with his glasses toward the staircase behind him. "The guest room upstairs," is his answer. A visitor might be inclined to think he's kidding, but he's not. "We've got to get him out of Florida, where every law enforcement officer and every prosecutor will be salivating to nail him again." He said he had no concerns about making such an offer to "Crazy Joe." "I would trust Joe with my life, as he trusted me with his."<o:p></o:p> 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. 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 Executing Justice Subject The topic of the resource Spaziano, Joe Capital punishment Description An account of the resource Michael Mello, a Vermont Law School Professor, has a background of working for death row inmates. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Anderson, Liz Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Vermonters Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-03-14 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 7 jpg 300 dpi Language A language of the resource English https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/8c7cb7a9c78e95163e358f4944bd188f.jpg a710c7f0a20da86ab6901ee74e52ca7a https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/cf676fc68b73c86c67287ec3a42d03e5.jpg 7f100938c8657e10003e97ee89aaf9ad https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/b1d476a5fd7e114d2a78345dda13c92b.jpg 9a0d75bdb2eb91157f7edf2422c24f5d https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/5c12fe34288d9b6a16ec29e2cfd0f227.jpg 25a87680b848411e215304483ed8fbda https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/80eb0bc18f327a4e673bcd31850fdaa4.jpg 7aaa9c1923d26fac1ea5e67653727b3a https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/4d4da5b4700debcf242f6b71b4261161.jpg a9302b1ddd8d48715cae21fabd73cdf5 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/979e111bdec39d30ca5d7cc8b2bae431.jpg 458cb6261108050abf5c2832f172c561 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/c61aaeed3d162b0c040d06952ae04cea.jpg 9c1da7152fa7a68e487338fee294d8cc Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [Page 1] Cover Story/Page 8 [title]Current Events [subtitle] This is Florida's electric chair. And here is the story of how two newsperps fought over wheter a man dervered to die in it [End Page 1] [Page 2] [title]Current Events [subtitle] Orlando's hometown newspaper thinks a killer might get off because The Miami Herald crusaded on his behalf. Whose truth is right? On Jan, 22, a Seminole County circuit judge granted Joseph "Crazy Joe" Spaziano a new trial on a 20- year-old conviction for murder. The ruling, now on appeal, capped an eight-month legal [crusade] and presumably shocked readers who followed the story in The Orlando Sentinel. Those who read The Miami Herald, however, were likely less surprised. Indeed, the two papers' competing, sometimes conflicting reports carried over into editorials following Judge O.H. Eaton Jr.'s ruling. "Justice awakens," crowed the Herald. “Justice clearly cheated,” huffed the Sentinel.  Who was right? In a way, both. A Herald reporter and editors read Spaziano's trial transcript, passed it off to experts, and [concluded] that the state's star wit- ness against Spaziano, Tony DİLisio, lied when he told a jury here in 1976 that Spaziano had shown him two bodies in a dump. The Herald's reporting raised the idea that DiLisio's original testimony sprang from a suggestive hypnotist, and that he was fed details by authorities who may have promised him lighter punishment for juvenile crimes. The Herald also [resurrected] DiLisio's past with an abusive father and a stepmother Who had some kind of sexual [page end] [page start] relationship with Spaziano, and therefore every motive to use their sons as a way to get back at him. To the question of whether Spaziano received a fair trial based on the paper [concluded] no. But the Sentinel countered with reports from law [enforcement] experts and others, includ- ing the former “old lady" of the once fearsome biker Spaziano, plus two of his brothers, who say Spaziano was involved in other murders and rapes. Darcy Fauss, who lived with Spaziano for about 18 months when he was on the lam, described him to the Sentinel as a sadistic gang enforcer who kept her in virtual slavery. To the question of whether Spaziano is a killer, some former associates say yes. Yet his only conviction for [murder] has now been reversed, and a new trial ordered. The discrediting of DiLisio creates a huge burden for the state to make its case again. But just as difficult is the question that served as undercurrent to the recent coverage: Can Florida afford to put a vicious thug back on the street because prosecu- tors and police did a poor job 20 years ago? Conversely, can Florida afford a standard [justice] that would execute a man based on dubious, and perhaps concocted, evidence? Together, the two papers did an unparalleled job of exploring the complex underpinnings of a death row case. Separately, [however], each paper subtly snubbed the truths reported by their rival, to their readers' detriment. “Orlando Sentinel readers who picked up the Herald on any given day were probably [confused]," posits Ron Sachs, until recently a spokesman for Gov. Chiles, who had signed Spaziano's execution order. If the Sentinel and the Herala competed directly for readers—a once common fact only rarely seen among newspapers today—the Spaziano case would have boosted the circulation of both and fomented a lively debate among readers across their [coverage] area. But because each paper dominates in its own [market], nobody except news [professionals] and elites like Sachs saw the alternative arguments. As efforts to deregulate [communications] hit their stride and leave ever-diminishing circles for competing viewpoints, the Herald-Sentinel contest serves as a parable of sorts for the age of media monopolies Lori Rozsa of the Herald says she took the assignment to check up on the Spaziano case. because it was her turn. Spaziano was only weeks away from his scheduled execution June 27 in the electric chair for killing Laura Harberts, an 18- year-old Orlando hospital clerk. A reinterview of DiLisio, his accuser, would be a routine part of Rozsa's job. "I totally expected him to say I stand by my story; leave me alone," Rozsa says. But DiLisio said he didn't remember his testimony of 20 years earlier. Rozsa didn't believe him. "I kept saying, 'How could you not remember your testimony in a murder case?" Rozsa returned several times to DiLisio's North Florida home with more questions. Finally DiLisio cracked. He said he had made up his testimony against Spaziano, then a member of the Outlaws motorcycle gang, at the urging of police. Suddenly the Herald had a major story. Suddenly all hell broke loose. Along with supportive [editorials] in the St. Petersburg Times, the Herald's coverage caused Chiles to stay the execution. He then ordered the Florida Depart- ment of Law Enforcement to investigate even as Spaziano's Lawyers pushed for a new trial and all before the Sentinel ran a [page end] [page start] single, locally reported place on what should have been, for them, a local story. The FDLE review convinced Chiles to sign another death war- rant. But the Florida Supreme Court ordered a hearing on DILASIO's wavering. Herald edito- rials called for a new trial, while it's news coverage questioned the FDLE report's accuracy. The Sentinel, investigating on its own, lamented the slow pace death penalty justice in its edito- rials and began running stories attacking DiLisio. The newspapers even sniped at one another's reporters. The competition had been sparked in early summer, when Michael Mello, a Vermont law professor who was then Spaziano's lawyer, began urging Gene Miller, a Herald editor, look at the case. For 19 years Spaziano had languished on death row, despite four death warrants. His case had been reviewed 16 times, including once by the U.S. Supreme Court. Miller, who had won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting that overturned another death row conviction, was intrigued. No physical evidence tied Spaziano to Harbert's death and, indeed, the body was so decomposed by the time it was discovered that medical examiners could not even fix a cause of death. Another body found at the same site has never been identified. More troubling was this: Tony DILisio, a 17-year-old acid haad and biker wannabe at the [page end] [page start] Miami cop and founding chair- time of the trial, had been hyp- notized by the same man who had elicited tainted testimony in the earlier overturned case. The Florida Supreme Court banned the use of hypnosis-enhanced testimony in 1985, saying it was inherently unreliable. But the ruling was not retroactive. Mello sent the case file to Miller, who in turn shared it with Warren Holmes, an ex- man of the American Polygraph Association's case review com- mittee. Having read hundreds of murder cases in his 40-year career, Holmes bills himself as an expert in sniffing out perjury, and claims to have worked on major cases from the John F. Kennedy assassination to the William Kennedy Smith rape trial. "I got the file and read it over Memorial Day weekend," he says. "I went back and said DILisio lied through his teeth and they should look into it." And so they did. Mello had written a fiery op ed piece pleading for a new trial, and Miller called friends at the Sentinel and The St. Petersburg Times and asked them to run it as well. It appeared in all three on June 4-seven days before the Herald's first report. "We ran the original plece that Mello wrote," says John Halle, vice president and editor of the Sentinel, But the piece arrived too late for Sentinel editors to confirm its veracity. "We did some research," Haile says. "We wanted a of another point of view, and then we wanted to do a little poking around." The result of the Sentinel's poking, published a month after Mello's op-ed piece and in the midst of the FDLE investigation, was a July 2 story that ques- tioned the assertion by Spaziano's supporters that he was a veritable martyr, and delved into DiLisio's claims to be reformed alcoholic and born- again Christian who had straightened out his life. 64 [page end] [page start] A former state attorney pro- nounced Spaziano "a cold-heart- ed killer," while a check on DILisio found nine Florida arrests, two recent DUIS and a pending court date for stalking. În short, the reformed DiLisio did not appear to be anyone's paragon of veracity and stability. Then again, the Herald never claimed he was. "The guy's a flake," says John Pancake, the Herald state editor who helped direct Rozsa's reporting. "The question is, do you want to send a man to the chair based on the word of a flake? He's not a [page end] [page start] witness for Spaziano; he's a wit- ness for the state. If he is unreli- able, it's the state's problem." Mello refused to talk to the Sentinel after its report. “In my view," he wrote in a fax after Chiles refused Spaziano's request for clemency, "you are an accomplice to murder." With the FDLE report and the governor's refusal, the tle lines were drawn: The Herald would bolster DİLisio's retreat and denigrate both the original investigation and the FDLE report; the Sentinel, with the help of police sources, would blast away both at DiLisio and Spaziano, suggesting the jailed biker is in fact a serial killer without portfolio. "The Orland Sentinel was trying to answer one question: Is 'Crazy Joe' Spaziano a bad guy?" says the Herald's Pancake. "We were trying to answer, 'Did he get a fair trial?" Sentinel editor Haile denies his paper's aim was to paint Spaziano one way or the other. "From the beginning there was just one issue in the case: Is Tony DiLisio telling the truth?" he says. "Everything else had  The Sentinel reported DiLisio was being pressured by the Outlaws to change his testimo- ny, and that he was a publicity seeker who may have recanted with an eye toward a book deal. Investigating DiLislo was a duty, Halle says, as was reminding readers what the Outlaws- and Spaziano in particular did and were capable of doing at the time Harberts disappeared. All coverage might have ended with the new Sept. 21 execu- tion date, but for what happened next. Mello obtained a deposition from DILisio in which he, for the first time, recanted under oath. Based on that, the state Supreme Court on Sept. 8 ordered a new hear ing. And Spaziano was spared again. Now things got weird. The FDLE report, which all but doomed Spaziano, was leaked sub- stantially to the Sentinel but minimally to other news out- lets. It con- tained all sorts of evidence not available in the original trial, including state- ments from sev- eral jailhouse snitches. Sealed by the governor's office allegedly to protect the safety of witnesses, the report would never be tested in court. Both the Sentinel and the Herald called for its release But the Herald was unable to speak to its major sources. Prosecutors "wanted to try that case in the Sentinel," gripes James Russ, the Orlando attor ney who replaced Mello as Spaziano's lead counsel. "And In the Sentinel they found a willing participant." The Herald attacked some of the reports' claims, like the one that said Spaziano had likely killed at least two other bikers in Chicago while he was on the run from Florida police. That case had been closed years ago with- out prosecution but with anoth- er suspect, the Herald reported. And as for the notion that DILisio still fears the Outlaws, "why did he have a listed phone [page end] [page start] from Mello, the attorney. The Sentinel reponded by reporting that Chicago police had reopened their 20-year-old murder case. Holmes, the Herald's expert, is doubtful. "Do they have people out actually interviewing people?" he scoffa, The FDLE report, he says, "offered all kinds of witnesses they did not produce in court. They Just assumed axiomatically the guy was guilty as hell."   But there were questions raised about journalism ethics as well. Miller, the Herald editor, had sent a lengthy letter to Chiles in August, pleading for him to meet with Mello's wit- nesses while he mulled Spaziano's bid for clemency. The letter went through Sachs, then the governor's press officer. Sentinel editorials later cited letter to suggest the Herald was in bed with Spaziano's team. But the letter doesn't concern Sachs so much as what he regards as close ties between Miller and Mello at the project's beginning. "I think some stan- dards of journalism were breached," Sachs says. "The roots of the Herald's involvement were not properly planted." Although Halle insists there- was no war, Pancake recalls that a Chicago Tribune reporter enlisted by the Herald for help was quickly called off the case. The Herald is a Knight-Ridder paper, the Tribune is the flagship of the Tribune Co., which owns the Sentinel. (The Chicago writer eventually was listed as a con- tributor to a Sentinel report.) "Reporters and editors involved in both newspapers were not detached, were not objective," contends Sachs. They were determined on a sec- ondary level to prove each other wrong. I think there is gomepro- fessional pride in that, but I also think there is a danger in that kind of case, that maybe a side bar that should be written is nbt assigned because it might defuse the boom." The boom in this case is the new trial for Spaziano, a trial in which evidence is long gone and witnesses, their memories cloud- ed by time, can easily be Impeached. Herald editorials have said that Spaziano likely will remain behind bars for the rest of his life anyway, based on his eariler conviction in the rape of an Orlando teen. But the Heraldla Investigal- Ing the rape trial as well. Among the problems: The young victim failed to pick Spaziano from a lineup at first, and had described her attacker as having red hair and no tattoos: Spaziano has black hair and many tattoos And the main prosecution wit- ness was Tony DILisio. The court ruling gave the Herald its first victory. "The judge said he believed DILisio now," says Haile. "Reasonable people can disagree." But the question of whether justice won is still open. Holmes is convinced that Spaziano was a victim of anti-biker hysteria, which the Sentinel shamelessly renewed in its recent coverage. He says a close reading of the trial transcript leaves only the conclusion that Spaziano didn't get a fair trial. "They don't understand the margin of error in the criminal justice system." he says of the Sentinel, "To assume someone's guilty because they were found guilty is absurd. There is a legal truth and there is an absolute truth. They don't always coincide." Haile would probably agree. Evidence that is good enough for a news story may never stand in court, and Orlando now faces the prospect of Crazy Joe Spaziano, aging biker socialized by 20 years on death row, back on the streets. "It's really frus- trating," Haile says. "Here you have a case that's been lying around for 20 years, and now you're going to have a new trial? Gimme a break. You can't go back and find justice. The Herald's coverage was challenged on several occasions, most abruptly during the hear- ing that preceded Judge Eaton's ruling when its former associate editor, Tony Proscio, was approached by Sentinel reporter Jim Leusner, who asked, "Has the Herald lost its objectivity?" Proscio, who left the Herald this year, subsequently offered an impassioned defense of his paper and its viewpaint. "Does Florida dare-does any decent Society dare-to electrocute a human being based on a trial like the one they gave Joe SpazianD 20 years ago?" he wrote in a Jan. 21 op-ed plece. "And if so, why bother with trials at all?" Not included in Proscio's nar- rative, Sentinel staffers note, was the context: When Leusner asked his question, Proscio had just stepped down from the stand where he had been called to testify in Spaziano's defense. But Proscio's question still holds, and it leads to another, ane regarding the fundamental purpose and duty of the press. If the justice system falls, then what is a newspaper's duty? The danger in today's con- stricting media world comes from the assumption that painstaking objectivity -an excellent business strategy-also makes for excellent journalism. The Spaziano coverage by either the Sentinel or the Herald 10 puts the lie to that theory. Other newspapers can claim to have maintained their objectivity. But they can't claim to have made a difference. Or saved a life. [page end] Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Spage, Wyatt 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 Current Events Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment Orlando (Fla.)--Maps Journalism False testimony Hypnotism Description An account of the resource The rivalry between two newspapers over the guilt or innocence of Joey Spaziano leads to a new trail, of a case that's over twenty years old. In the end, Justice won over newspaper sales. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ericsson Jr., Edward Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Orlando Weekly Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996, February, 15-21 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 8 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 Orlando, Florida https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/927306cb3181277414fb3d5601f72744.jpg db01384ce48841a168d99de80e5aa034 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Lee, Tessa Text Any textual data included in the document [title] Parent-child privilege has little precedent By Mike Donoghue Free Press Staff Witter Arthur and Geneva Yandow faced an uphill battle when they asserted that as parents they should not be forced to testify against their son, a rape suspect. No state recognize the privilege, but a Vermont Law School professor said they should hold their ground and appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Professor Michael Mello knows the parent-child issue well. He helped defend a woman who refused to tell a Washington, D.C., court the whereabouts of her daughter. The mother suspected her divorce husband of molesting the child during court order visits. The mother went to jail in August 1987 for two years rather then have her 9-year-old daughter visit her father. Courts recognize that some people have special rights when it comes to certain communications. They include doctor-patient, priest-confessor, counselor-client, journalist-source, lawyer-client, and husband-wife. Some are based on common law, and others are based on state laws.  There appears to be little support in the courts to extend husband-wife privilege to parent-child, Burlington lawyer Noah Paley said. Paley, who also has an interest in medical-confidentiality issues, noted that in cases involving doctors, counselors or lawyers, the person is seeking a professional service. Dr. Arnold Golodetz pf the Vermont Ethics Network agreed. He noted that a husband-wife or parent-child privilege is not based on a commercial relationship. Jane Kirtley of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press said journalists have a constitutional protection under the First Amendment. "Journalism is the one business protected by the Constitution," the Arlington, Va., lawyer said. 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 Parent-child privilege has little precedent Subject The topic of the resource Parents should not have to testify against children committed crimes in court. Description An account of the resource No state recognize the child/parent privilege when it comes to testifying in court cases. Many argue they should appeal to the Supreme Court. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Donoghue, Mike Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Donoghue, Mike. "parent-child privilege has little precedence." The Burlington Free Press Newspaper, March 29, 1996. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-03-29 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 jpg 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/dd4b7cecbcbe741e23da57cc64b9a276.jpg 4443a2c4be8e54f4b35250fc8bef3776 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/a874f6476e2df09098ccabc869c4e7f7.jpg 56833d5f9dcb4e3c1ac56cf397deb7ee https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/2e8ac087052af749d881073bac3c6c15.jpg 2556b1b940aeb62e264b522fe1250a09 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY [spacing] Page 19 Citation [spacing] Search Result [spacing] Rank 9 of 63 [spacing] Database 4/14/96 LATIMES 27 [spacing] ALLNEWS 4/14/96 L.A. Times 27 1996 WL 5259955 (Publication page references are not available for this document.) [centered] Los Angeles Times Copyright, The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times 1996 all rights reserved [centered] Sunday, April 14, 1996 [centered] PART-A; Advance Desk [centered] Parents Jailed for Refusing to Testify Against Son, 25; Courts: Vermont couple cite 'parent-child privilege' to justify silence at rape case inquest. [centered] WILSON RING [centered] ASSOCIATED PRESS Arthur and Geneva Yandow have gone to jail in hopes of keeping their son out of one. The couple refuse to testify at a prosecutor's inquest in a rape case in which the suspect is their 25-year-old son. The Yandows claim that "parent-child privilege" gives them the legal and moral authority to refuse. So far, the courts and the couple's church disagree. "My clients are absolutely adamant that they will not testify," lawyer Paul Volk said Wednesday. "They believe morally and based on their religious values they will not destroy their family and betray their son." Craig Yandow, who lives with his parents and works in his father's construction business, has not been charged in the Feb. 14 attack, in which a woman was raped, beaten and left in the cold, unconscious and half-naked. A jacket identical to the one the younger Yandow owns--blue, with "Saint John's Bay" on the back--was found at the scene. Also, Yandow had injuries "consistent with those a rapist would sustain from a struggling victim," prosecutors said in court papers. District Judge Edward Cashman jailed the Yandows on March 28 for contempt of court after the couple refused his order to testify. There is no limit to how long they can be held. The judge set a hearing for April 27. Once it becomes clear that jail won't change their minds, the [end page one] [begin page two] judge will have to release them, Volk said. Prosecutors have not said what they hope to learn from the couple. Craig Yandow's attorney, Andrew Mikell, refused to answer questions about the case of say where his client is now. "He is concerned about his parents' situation," Mikell said. "Until he is charged, it's tough for me to do or say anything." The state Supreme Court ruled 5 to 0 last month that, because Craig Yandow is a competent adult, his parents cannot claim parent-child privilege. Similarly, the Rev Walter Miller, a canon lawyer for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington, which includes all of Vermont, said no church doctrine would allow the Yandows to refuse to help prosecutors. If the couple were to ask their parish priest for advice, only one answer would be possible, he said: "you'd be telling them to cooperate. This son of theirs is not a child." But Volk said the Supreme Court ignored a number of legal precedents to the contrary. And he pointed out a section of the Catholic Church's catechism that lays out family responsibilities: "The citizen is obliged in conscience not to follow the directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral order." Volk said legal precedents in his favor include a 1979 case in which a court in New York state suppressed grand jury testimony of the father of a 23-year-old vehicular homicide suspect, citing parent-child privilege. But Vermont prosecutors said in court papers that it appeared that New York's highest court overruled that decision in a separate 1994 case. They said courts nationwide "have overwhelmingly rejected parent-child privilege." "Nearly all have concluded that the legal system's demand for truth, especially in a criminal proceeding, should not yield to a family's momentary desire for loyalty or harmony," prosecutors told Vermont's high court. Michael Mello, a constitutional law professor at the Vermont Law School, said parent-child privilege is an unusual argument. "It presents both dimensions of a fairly new, very interesting and extremely foundational question: the legitimacy of whether there is in fact parent-child privilege," Mello said. "Even if there is not, can a parent's refusal to become a police informant against her son [result in her being] incarcerated indefinitely? It's a family values issue." [centered] ---- INDEX REFERENCE S---- STORY ORIGIN: WILLISTON, VT. NEWS CATEGORY: WIRE REGION: United States (US) EDITION: BULLDOG EDITION Word Count: 605 4/14/96 LATIMES 27 END OF DOCUMENT Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Weinstein, Samuel 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 Parents Jailed for Refusing to Testify Against Son Subject The topic of the resource Court Case Parent-Child Privilege Punishment Description An account of the resource A description of the consequences faced by the parents of a man on trial for rape. The parents refused to testify against their son citing parent-Child Privilege. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ring, Wilson Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Ring, Wilson. "Parents Jailed for Refusing to Testify Against Son, 25; Courts: Vermont couple cite 'parent-child privilege' to justify silence at rape case inquest." L.A. Times. April 14, 1996, 3. Language A language of the resource English Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-04-14 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 3 JPGs 300 DPI Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Williston, VT court case Michael Mello Parent-Child Privilege rape https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/ae7798ab0914fe709e5f1966242d532a.jpg be7939f2053af724d903f9081bcfbf08 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [Start of Article] [Heading] Fired For Saving His Client's Life [Start of Column One] "IF THIS COURT INtends to kill this innocent man by depriving him of the effective assistance of counsel," pro bono counsel Michael Mello wrote the Florida Supreme Court last September 8, "then it will do so without my complicity. I will not participate in a sham evidentiary 'hearing.'" To stop the machinery of death from claiming his client, Mello threw himself in the gears. By refusing to show up for a hearing for which he had been given less than a week to prepare---and highlighting that, in his opinion, his client was being denied effective assistance of counsel---he shamed the court into granting a stay of execution and time to prepare properly. For years the eccentric Mello now a professor at Vermont Law School ["When Worlds Collide," June 1995], had written in pleadings, law review articles, and newspaper editorials that his death row client, Joseph "Crazy Joe" Spaziano, was innocent. Mello's writings were always passionate, always verbose, occasionally offensive, and never successful. Spaziano, a member of an Orlando motorcycle gang, was [End of Column One] [Start of Column Two] convicted in January 1976 of brutally murdering Laura Harberts, an 18-year-old hospital clerk, who disappeared on August 5, 1973, and whose skeletal remains were discovered in a garbage dump 16 days later. While the case raised numerous perplexing legal issues, the most disturbing was that---unbeknownst to the jury---the testimony of the key prosecution witness, a troubled teenage drug addict named Anthony DiLisio, consisted almost entirely of hypnotically recovered memories. Although the state supreme court letter decided that hypnotically induced testimony was so unreliable as to be inadmissible per se, both that court and the federal courts refused to upset Spaziano's conviction, since his trial lawyer had never objected to DiLisio's testimony on those grounds. Indeed, his trial lawyer chose not to let the jury know that DiLisio's testimony was hypnotically induced, fearing that the jury might give it undue credence if it knew. While Spaziano's fourth execution warrant was pending in June 1995, DiLisio, now a born-again Christian, recanted his testimony. Governor Law- [End of Column Two] [Start of Column Three] ton Chiles briefly stayed Spaziano's execution to investigate the recantation, but in late August he issued a fifth warrant, claiming that a report by state investigators---which Chilies refused to make public---established that the recantation was false. Spaziano was to die September 21. On September 8 Mello went to the Florida Supreme Court seeking a stay of execution and an evidentiary hearing concerning the recantation. The Court granted the hearing, but refused to order a stay of execution. Instead, by a 4-to-3 vote, the court ordered Mello, an appellate lawyer with very little trial experience, no associates, and no investigator, to handle an evidentiary hearing one week later, on September 15. The court also ordered the state's Office of the Capital Collateral Representative (CCR)---a public defender's office devoted to capital post-conviction appeals---to assist Mello. Mello refused to comply. "We would have thrown a hearing together," he says, "put on enough evidence so that [the justices could say], 'Yeah, you had your hearing,' we would [End of Column Three] [Start of Column Four] [Image: Photograph of Michael Mello] have lost, the [trial-level] judge would have made killer fact-findings against us, and . . . Joe would have been dead on time and as scheduled." In a handwritten fax sent from his motel to the supreme court on the night of September 8, Mello just said no. He wrote, among other things, that he and CCR could not provide competent assistance with just six days' preparation. Mello also pledged that he would not surrender his 25 boxes of case files to CCR or to any other attorney in time for the hearing. "If you are going to kill an innocent man without a lawyer," he wrote, "you will do so in such a way that the whole world will see what you are doing. . . . I will not be your mask." [End of Column Four] [Start of Column Five] The high court blinked. On September 12 it threw Mello off the case, but granted Spaziano a stay. Then, in January, after new pro bono attorneys at 470-lawyer Holland & Knight took over the case---and the supreme court allowed them almost three months to prepare---circuit judge O.H. Eaton, Jr., of Sanford, Florida, overturned Spaziano's conviction and granted a new trial. "Mike Mello's responsible for Joe Spaziano's life," says H&K partner Gregg Thomas, who handled the hearing with his partner Stephen Hanlon and Orlando-based criminal specialist James Russ, Holland & Knight donated about $400,000 in lawyer time and $70,000 in costs to handle the hearing, Thomas estimates, not counting Russ's time. The state has appealed Judge Eaton's ruling to the Florida supreme court. Meanwhile, Spaziano is still serving life for the 1974 rape and battery of a 16-year-old girl. Mello believes Spaziano is innocent of that charge as well. But, as Mello says, "That's another story." ---Roger Parloff [End of Column Five] The American Lawyer April 1996.19 [End of Article] Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Format: Magazine Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Schroeder, Audrey 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 Fired For Saving His Client's Life Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment Spaziano, Joe Description An account of the resource Michael Mello is fired for trying to save Joseph Spaziano's life. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Parloff, Roger Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-04 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. Language A language of the resource English Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Parloff, Roger. “Fired For Saving His Client's Life.” The American Lawyer, April, 1996, 19. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 JPG 300 DPI https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/754e1032183901295e62c24e710e1bdc.jpg 578e8a126791520f0fe92df4ac655fe7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [title] ‘Mello’s responsible for Spaziano’s life’ [subtitle] Roger Parloff is a senior writer at The American Lawyer. This article is reprinted, with permission, from the April 1996 issue. “If this court intends to kill this innocent man by depriving him of the effective assistance of counsel,” pro bono counsel Michael Mello wrote the Florida Supreme Court last Sept. 8, “then it will do so without my complicity. I will not participate in a sham evidentiary hearing.” To stop the machinery of death from claiming his client, Mello threw himself in the gears. By refusing to show up to a hearing for which he had been given a week to prepare and highlighting that, in his opinion, his client was being denied effective assistance of counsel, he shamed the court into granting a stay of execution and time to prepare properly. For years the eccentric Mello, now a professor at Vermont Law School, had written in pleadings, law review articles, and newspaper editorials that his Death Row client, Joseph “Crazy Joe” Spaziano, was innocent. Mello’s writings were always passionate, always verbose, occasionally offensive, and never successful. Spaziano, a member of an Orlando motorcycle gang, was convicted in January 1976 of brutally murdering Laura Harberts, an 18-year-old hospital clerk, who disappeared on Aug. 5, 1973, and whose skeletal remains were discovered in a garbage dump 16 days later. While the case raised numerous perplexing legal issues, the most disturbing was that -- unbeknownst to the jury -- the testimony of the key prosecution witness, a troubled teen drug addict named Anthony DiLisio, consisted almost entirely of hypnotically recovered memories. Although the state Supreme Court later decided that hypnotically induced testimony was so unreliable as to be inadmissible per se, both that court and the federal courts refused to upset Spaziano’s conviction, since his trial lawyer had never objected to DeLisio’s testimony on those grounds. Indeed, his trial lawyer chose not to let the jury know that DeLisio’s testimony was hypnotically induced, fearing that the jury might give it undue credence if it knew. While Spaziano’s fourth execution warrant was pending in June 1995, DeLisio, now a born-again Christian, recanted his testimony, Gov. Lawton Chiles briefly stayed Spaziano’s execution to investigate the recantation, but in late August he issued a fifth warrant, claiming that a report by state investigators -- which Chiles refused to make public -- established the recantation was false. Spaziano was to die Sept. 21. On Sept. 8 Mello went to the Supreme Court seeking a stay of execution and an evidentiary hearing concerning the recantation. The court granted the hearing but refused to order a stay of execution. Instead, by a 4-to-3 vote, the court ordered Mello, an appellate lawyer with very little trial experience, no associates, and no investigator, to handle an evidentiary hearing one week later, on Sept. 15. The court also ordered the state’s Office of Capital Collateral Representative -- a public defender’s office devoted to capital post-conviction appeals -- to assist Mello. Mello refused to comply. “We would have thrown a hearing together,” he says, “put on enough evidence so that (the justices could say), ‘Yeah, you had your hearing,’ we would have lost, the [trial-level] judge would have made killer fact-finding against us, and . . . Joe would have been dead on time and as scheduled.” In a handwritten fax sent from his motel to the Supreme Court on the night of Sept. 8, Mello just said No. He wrote, among other things, that he and CCR could not provide competent assistance with just six days’ preparation. Mello also pledged that he would not surrender his 25 boxes of case files to CCR or to any other attorney in time for the hearing. “If you are going to kill an innocent man without a lawyer,” he wrote, “you will do so in such a way that the whole world will see what you are doing. . . . I will not be your mask.” The high court blinked. On Sept. 12 it threw Mello off the case but granted Spaziano a stay. Then, in January, after new pro bono attorneys at 470-lawyer Holland & Knight took over the case -- and the Supreme Court allowed them almost three months to prepare -- Circuit Judge O.H. Eaton Jr., of Sanford, overturned Spaziano’s conviction and granted a new trial. “Mike Mello’s responsible for Joe Spaziano’s life,” says H&K partner Gregg Thomas, who handled the hearing with his partner Stephen Hanlon and Orlando-based criminal specialist James Russ. Holland & Knight donated about $400,000 in lawyer time and $70,000 in costs to handle the hearing, Thomas estimates, not counting Russ’s time. The state has appealed Judge Eaton’s ruling to the Florida Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Spaziano is still serving life for the 1971 rape and battery of a 16-year-old girl. Mello believes Spaziano is innocent of that charge as well. But as Mello says, “that’s another story.” [Break of text] Judge Eaton overturned Spaziano’s conviction and granted 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 Dickinson, Terra Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Kurtz, Logan 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 responsible for Spaziano's life' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Parloff, Roger 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 Spaziano, Joe Mello, Michael Description An account of the resource Michael Mello successfully argued for Joe Spaziano to receive a fair trial by refusing to show up to a hearing for which he had been given a week to prepare and highlighting that Spaziano was being denied effective assistance of counsel, he shamed the court into granting a stay of execution and time to prepare properly. Though Mello himself was thrown off of the case, this action allowed for Spaziano to have a new trial. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-04 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 JPG 300 DPI Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Roger Parloff, The New York Times, 1996. Reprint, The American Laywer, April 1996. 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 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/7cc96ba3b3728a01e37a244f4ef8ee9c.jpg bed2a41e8d5ac81680ab69ea943916a2 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/8ec77748ba0cabb567fb0662e969b1e7.jpg 19c349a2229af2dcbffc5adb2fe1e2d0 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/7ec2807136bf28e17ed4e6de51b7ae92.jpg f749512efecdd51478b5301ffc89300f https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/d20af6217302f37ccf5aab244eb45475.jpg f507a390a6f8a2759a8ac5cd05358f46 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/80e8cb5da952639251bbcaeb3e42c9a8.jpg d13af59feb4eaa43fe24ce805d44d827 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/fca7a495a6c210750fd116acae31c9d2.jpg a3f9744677aa9d0675a2035a5add4f6d https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/267a2c7bb69c87c407a6ae1b9821b986.jpg 3511dbd3b69368b9d204aa1bac628f8c https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/3194eb76a6870c7e5c3e3af7efad6fc9.jpg d26b2a4a38f873faedabeae8509d70f3 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/f421b8b06ce89bfb9e2c95683d5fc482.jpg d7cf73cb3a8844d70023c5f7943f0f3a https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/558212608f6a9e15e92e28448ca93a0b.jpg 0f0f23ecf83ff8aa4367451ad9a1da36 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/e1dc7544fcaf8833920925b45f670d5e.jpg b083930b9f2fceac32389eb47926d36f https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/500b71ba3610349fa7ccc4177bbdb7a2.jpg 8d71490211d7299c73de123a0f824e0e https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/9e3cf99d9a8e6b9a8c69b0b40ff55377.jpg ccf025b081ef3cf3a8b21097ac44f323 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/20837fce63abe70cea959b654faa7024.jpg 20381d58fb602b95ba2171aa464f095e https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/828c766cfec8e7b2fa24039e1410ab85.jpg 58114ca6321c0d60e1d1eba46e5b47d1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY                                                                        Page 4 Citation                                  Search Result             Rank 7 of 63               Database 6/1/96 FLATREND 36                                                                                 ALLNEWS  6/1/96 Fla. Trend 36                                                                                               1996 WL 8832093                                                                                        (Publication page reference are not available for this document.) Florida Trend                                                                                                           COPYRIGHT 1996 Trend Magazines Inc. Saturday, June 1, 1996 Vol. 39, No. 2, ISSN: 0015-4326 Man, in the middle; a reappraisal. (Bob Graham) (Cover Story)                                 David Poppe As Bob Graham considers whether to run for governor again, it's time to take the measure of the man's record in Tallahassee and Washington. The question is: Is this inveterate moderate what Florida needs as it faces an extraordinary list of social and financial woes? In the grand ballroom of the St. Petersburg Hilton, U.S. Sen. Bob Graham tells an overflow crowd of political junkies about his work in Washington. Bland as a high school civics teacher, he talks of governing by finding "the center" of tough issues and then working his way out to build consensus. But the audience wants to know about the tension just below Graham's serene surface. Sure enough, when Graham opens the room for questions, the first person up asks if he'll quit the Senate to run for governor in 1998. Slightly pained, Graham gives his pat response: he won't decide until after the November elections. Later, his aides roll their eyes and profess bemusement. "It's the first thing everybody wants to know," says one wearily. A week later in Washington, when a reporter asks Graham over breakfast in the Senate dining room about what will influence his decision, Graham hardly looks up from his bowl of granola and strawberries. Not only is he not making his decision until year-end, he says, he's decided not even to think about it until then. A disingenuous answer, perhaps, but with his innocent brown eyes and his chubby cheeks, Bob Graham always comes across as sincere. "What he's doing is freezing people," asserts a Republican political operative who knows Graham well. "He is not only saying he's keeping his options open, he's telling the financial infrastructure of the Democratic Party to keep their options open, not to do anything right                Copr. West 1998 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY                                                                        Page 5 6/1/96 FLATREND 36                                                                                (Publication page reference are not available for this document.)  now," says the strategist.  He certainly has people in Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay's camp on edge. Mackay, who has announced he will run in 1998, shares a circle of close friends and fund-raisers with Graham. "Graham won't make up his mind and that's what's making them mad," says a top MacKay adviser in Tallahassee. "I'll think the more he strings this out, the more divisive it will become." Or maybe, the longer Graham strings this out, the more likely nervous Democrats will be to beg him to run. "One problem the Democrats have in Florida is they are always looking for a 'deus ex machina' to bail them out. That's the role Chiles played in 1990, and it's the role they hope Bob Graham will play in 1998," says Robert L. Joffee, vice president with Mason-Dixon Political/Media Research in Miami. "It's a common belief among Democrats that, 'There's only one guy who can do this for us."' But if the Democrats need a man on a white horse, is Bob Graham really the right man? There is no diminishing his accomplishments and his enormous political capital. Fully 62% of Floridians have a favorable impression of him, according to the latest polls. "He may have some political enemies, but I don't know of any," says former Democratic Congressman Jim Bacchus, now a World Trade Organization judge. Graham has been a dominant political figure in Florida life over the last quarter century, and he is nearly the stuff of legend by now in some political quarters. Many Floridians remember Graham's two terms as governor as an era of honest progressive government combined with great promise and prosperity. It's tempting to assume that if Graham returned to Florida as governor, so would the good times that marked his first two administrations. A thought centrist Yet a close look at 59-year-old Graham's record and temperament suggests that he might not be much happier in Tallahassee then he has been in Washington, D.C., in recent years. When he governed before, Democrats controlled the Legislature, and the electorate didn't howl in outrage every time taxes rose. And while Graham did raise taxes to help pay for Florida's rapid growth, he failed to push for fundamental tax reform, something the next governor almost certainly will have to do. In a 1986 profile of several top Graham aides, FLORIDA TREND noted that even in less contentious times, Graham needed a tough-minded staff to help him deal with the Legislature. Until hard-nosed Jacksonville businessman Dick Burroughs became chief of staff in 1981, Graham's image was that of a dithered. A St. Petersburg Times editorial once dubbed him "Governor Jell-O."                Copr. West 1998 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY                                                                        Page 6 6/1/96 FLATREND 36                                                                                (Publication page reference are not available for this document.) In Washington, Graham has developed a reputation as a thoughtful centrist, but he has never sponsored a piece of major legislation that became law. If Florida is approaching a financial day of reckoning, as many believe, it is worth asking whether Graham would risk the enormous political capital he's built up over 30 years to push reforms on taxes, education, entitlements or growth management. Maddeningly, the person who could answer the question says he's not even thinking about it. In 1998, constitutional revision will be on the ballot for the first time since 1968, meaning voters could be asked to make changes to the state's tax system, the public school system, even to the balance of power between the governor, the legislature and the cabinet. Rod Petrey, president of the Collins Center, a Tallahassee think tank, predicts there could be competing proposals to revise Florida's tax system- which could either open up new revenue streams or severely limit the state's taxing powers- and to reduce the independence of Florida Cabinet officials, this increasing the governor's powers. "There could be a dramatic changeover in the next couple of years in the way Florida is governed," Petrey says. And because there proposals will go to a statewide vote, candidates for governor will have to endorse one set or another: Both parties will stress making government more efficient, but Democrats probably will ask for new taxes for schools, social services and infrastructure while Republicans will favor government that taxes less and offers less. "I think we are approaching a train wreck, where our population growth continues to accelerate and the need to take care of the most needy of our citizens-children, the people with tremendous the health problems, the elderly- continues to accelerate," says Board of Regents Chancellor Charles Reed, a former chief of staff to Graham in Tallahassee. To Reed, that means the day is coming when the university system will turn away qualified students for lack of space. In just the next dozen years, the number of students for lack of space. In just the next dozen years, the number of students graduating from Florida's public high schools and universities means paying more taxes or making draconian cuts in other government programs. In short, 1998 has all the makings of a dramatic race. "I think it's going to be a pivotal race," says MacKay. "I think candidates for governor are not going to be able to avoid saying how they would deal with these central issues."                Copr. West 1998 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY                                                                        Page 7 6/1/96 FLATREND 36                                                                                (Publication page reference are not available for this document.) Both MacKay and Jeb Bush, who is expected to be the GOP's choice for anither run at the state house in 1998, often speak with disarming candor about controversial issues. MacKay openly calls for higher fees on new development, for example, which makes him anathema to builders. Bush supports giving parents vouchers and forcing public schools to complete for students, an idea many educators hate. Graham, on the other hand, is as cautious as football coach with a two-touchdown lead. Asked a tough question, he's as likely to turn it around and ask a reporter's opinion as he is to answer it. He won't even respond when asked what were the most difficult two or three votes he's ever had to make in the Senate. In meetings with his staff, Graham plays a Socratic role, listening to an aide's report then asking questions, rarely injecting his own opinions. "he's very deliberative, the way he works things through," says Sen. Jay Rockefeller, one of Graham's close friends. And he eschewal confrontation when possible. "I don't think politics has to move from being competitive to being confrontational," he says. "If you end up laming enemies every time you disagree, you're not going to get anywhere." Even a few admirers admit Graham's style is better suited to synthesizing ideas than leading with his own. "I don't think that's his inclination, to be the first person out," says Tom Herndon, who was Gov. Graham's planning and budget director. "His instinctive caution probably prevents him from being the first person out of the box on some of these leading issues. Somebody who is less studious might jump out first, and then somebody like Graham comes in behind and addresses these questions others may have overlooked." Never discussed the death penalty  Graham is not just cautious, however. He's virtually opaque. A 1984 profile in the Miami Herald noted that many of Graham's longtime aides had never had a personal conversation with their boss. His wife said he'd never discussed with her his controversial support for the death penalty, even though protesters regularly disrupted his public events, including his 1980 nominating speech for Jimmy Carter at the Democratic National Convention. For years, he's carried the now-famous small notebook everywhere, recording all the little details of his day. His wife of 37 years, Adele, tells the story of a flight in South America, when the pilot warned the startled passengers that the plane was about to crash. During what might've been their last moments on earth, Adele Graham                   Copr. West 1998 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY                                                                        Page 8 6/1/96 FLATREND 36                                                                              (Publication page reference are not available for this document.) quaked while Bob jotted down the pilot's instructions on preparing for impact. "He doesn't have the kind of charisma that some people are born with or cultivate," allows Herndon. "But he is always there working harder than anybody else." Graham, like other politicians, has become adept at avoiding discussion of tough issues. For example, bring up the subject of Florida's mediocre public schools, and Graham doesn't talk about solutions such as vouchers or trimming a larded education bureaucracy, like Bush, or about addressing the stresses caused by population growth, like MacKay. Rather, he spins out an anecdote about one of his four daughters, Virginia teacher Suzanne Gibson. "If I can put it personally, my third daughter is a wonderful early childhood education teacher," he says over breakfast in Washington. "She taught for several years in Dade Country. Her last year at a new elementary school in northwest Dade, she had 38 students in her kindergarten class. The she got married and moved to Great Falls, Va., and taught in the Fairfax County system. The first year she taught kindergarten there, she had 24 students in her class. "That's a pretty dramatic example of the level of concern about primary education in those two communities, and if you are somebody who is deciding "Am I better off locating my software company in Great Falls, Va., or in Miami, Fla., '38-to-24 will be a figure that will be influential on your judgment as to the values of those communities." Does that mean Graham factors raising taxes to build more schools and hire more teachers? Hard to say. Before one can ask, he pulls out a photo of his daughter's one-year-old triplets. "Her class size went from 38 to 24 to three," he beams. Similarly, Graham is a master at managing his image. Recent history shows no other Florida politician can match Graham's ability to connect with regular people, even though Graham himself is a Harvard-educated lawyer and a millionaire. Back in the 1970s, when Graham was a mere state senator, he was given to delivering high-minded lectures on the Senate floor. At the time, the "Doghouse Democrats," so-called because their progressive ideas irked the leadership. Back then, Graham reflected his constituents in Dade County, who were so liberal that they re-elected Claude Pepper, Dante Fascial and Bill Lehman to the U.S. Congress for more than a generation.                  Copr. West 1998 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY                                                                        Page 9 6/1/96 FLATREND 36                                                                                (Publication page reference are not available for this document.) When Graham ran for governor in 1978, he overhauled his Dade persona to reflect the conservatism that existed in the state as a whole. He stopped calling himself D. Robert Graham, becoming simply Bob. And to counter the image of the wealthy WASP with a Harvard degree, Graham borrowed an idea from Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin and began spending days working at ordinary jobs, many of them menial. On his way to the state house, Graham did 100 of these jobs and wrote an illustrated book about it called "Workdays." A sense of ordinary life Aided by this new populist image, Graham upset heavily favored Attorney General Robert Shevin in the Democratic primary, then beat drug store magnate Jack Eckerd in the general election. He still spends one day each month a workday. Many have called it a gimmick, but Graham says he genuinely enjoys it. Chancellor Reed claims it gives Graham a sense of ordinary life that most leaders lack. "It makes a tremendous difference in his decision making and how he looks at the world," Reed says. When Graham spent a recent workday building scenery at a new theme attraction near Daytona International Speedway, he pounded nails alongside a former rock musician. True to form, Graham looked for common ground with the younger man and found it: country music. Before the day ended, they had written a song together. "When you hear a song with the words 'I've got tension on the surface but I'm boiling just below, because of you hon,' that's my song, he recounts later to his amused staff. The image he created nearly two decades ago stuck, as Florida voters have come to see Graham as pleasing mix of Ivy League sense and old Florida sensibility. Even his omnipresent foulard necktie, imprinted with little images of Florida, bespeaks approachability and good humor. It's hard to imagine, for instance, Graham's fellow Harvard alumnus and proud intellectual, New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, sporting little Empire State buildings on his ties-even if his re-election depended on it.  Everyone who knows Graham describes him as extremely smart. Former Congressman Bacchus calls him "extraordinarily bright, far brighter than most other people are in public office or who seek public office."  And while he is not averse to displaying his intellect among his peers, to Florida voters he's simply a rather modest, nice guy. In the wall above her desk, Graham’s press secretary has a description by biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin of Franklin D. Roosevelt, a description                Copr. West 1998 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY                                                                      Page 10 6/1/96 FLATREND 36                                                                                (Publication page reference are not available for this document.) that age says reminds her of her boss: "In talking on the radio Roosevelt used simple words, concrete examples and every day analogies to make his points. He looked for words that he would use in informal conversations with one or two of his friends, words the average of American could easily understand."  But this fixation on public opinion has led to criticism over the years that Graham is alarmingly malleable. In his 1995 book about the revival of death row in America, "Among the Lowest of the Dead," former Miami Herald reporter David Von Drehle portrayed Graham as "a protean genius" who signed death warrants on dozens of convicted killers to deflect criticism that he was too liberal for Florida. In 1979, when Graham took office, only one man, Gary Gilmore, had been executed in America in the previous decade. In Graham's eight years in office, Florida executed 16 convicted killers, more than any other state. Many more death warrants signed by Graham were stayed by courts because the defendants still had appeals available to them. "'Cynical' is the word that I have always used to describe Graham's use of the death penalty," says Michael Mello, a former West Palm Beach public defender and now a professor at Vermont Law School in South Royalton, Vt. "He cynically exploited Floridians' legitimate fears of crime to further his own political career." At the same time, Graham eschewed the more expensive task of building prisons during his last term as governor. When he left office, Florida's prisons were filled to 99% of capacity. That forced his successor, Bob Martinez, to call a special session of the Legislature less than two weeks after his inauguration in 1987 to respond to the court-ordered mass release of inmates from overcrowded facilities. Graham's image and reality diverge in other areas as well. For one thing, though he's deservedly credited with guiding Florida through a period of unprecedented growth during the early 1980s, Graham shares responsibility for some of the problems besetting state government today. A month after Graham left Tallahassee in 1987, a 21-person committee of legislators and civic and business leaders headed by Charles Zwick, then chairman Southeast Bank, issued a devastating report on the state's inability to provide basic services and to cope with its exploding population. What's most troubling about the Zwick report, commissioned by the Legislature, is that all of the problems it cited, including a creaky                Copr. West 1998 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY                                                                      Page 11 6/1/96 FLATREND 36                                                                                (Publication page reference are not available for this document.) tax structure, a low-skill work force, a mediocre system of roads and highways and an economy based on growth and tourism, continue to plague the state to this day. And they will still be there when the next governor takes office. While that speaks poorly of Graham's administration- the Florida Growth Management Act of 1985- ultimately failed to rein in sprawling development. The law required cities and counties to show they could build infrastructure to support new development before issuing building permits, and gave the state new powers to prevent the issuing of permits. But the law's reliance on bureaucracy and red tape doomed it to failure. Today, the act has been gutted, and Florida has enough permitting in place to accommodate a population of 90 million people, more than six times the current figure. Graham also left tax reform to Bob Martinez, a governor with far less political capital. Martinez proposed an ill-fated services tax and implemented the lottery. Graham's style of governing exasperates some in his own party. Miami attorney Sonny Holtzman, a major Democratic fund-raiser and longtime confidante of Lawton Chiles, shakes his head when asked what a Graham run for governor would mean to Florida. After a moment he allows that if Graham quits Washington perhaps Florida could get a better senator. "Wouldn't it be nice if we had a couple of powerful senators who got things done and brought things home?" Holtzman asks, "What have er got now?" As for Graham's previous tenure as governor, Holtzman's not impressed. When Graham was governor before, he says, "it was all peaches and cream. Let's pass this and let's not pass that." He believes Graham would struggle in today's more contentious environment where Republicans share power with Democrats. Even if Graham was a governor who didn't take on all he might have, he still departed Tallahassee enormously popular with an unlimited future. As he arrived in Washington, there was even talk that he might one day run for president. And why not? He'd defeated an incumbent Republican, Paula Hawkins, during the middle of the popular Reagan administration. He looked like          Copr. West 1998 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY                                                                      Page 12 6/1/96 FLATREND 36                                                                                (Publication page reference are not available for this document.) a Democrat: who might fare well in the Sunbelt in a national election. He was wealthy, untainted by scandal and even faintly glamorous-his famous sister-in-law, Katharine Graham, ran the Washington Post. But a funny thing happened on the way to the White House. Rather than hut the ground running, Graham landed inside the Beltway with a dull thud. He joined the Senate amid a large class of freshman Democrats, many of whom had moved over from the House of Representatives and knew more about the ways of Washington than he. Ending up with plain vanilla Graham's inherent formality seemed to return when he got to the nation's capital. Upon arriving therein 1986, freshman Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota paid a personal visit it Lloyd Bentsen, the new chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which writes policy on key matters like taxes, health care and Social Security, to pleaded for a seat. Graham sent out letters to top senators. Daschle's personal approach won out, gaining him the seat he wanted. Graham ended up with three plan vanilla assignments: Environment and Public Works; Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; and Veterans' Affairs. A decade later, Daschle is Senate minority leader. Graham did get a much-covered seat on the Finance Committee, but not until 1995. Graham also got the worst of it in a few scrapes with West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, which controls spending bills. Byrd has long opposed a balanced budget amendment and a presidential line-item veto. Graham supports both measures. Byrd is also thin-skinned and a notorious pork barreled. After Graham took to the Senate floor to chastise Byrd for inserting "little piglets" that grow into "giant hogs" in an appropriations bill, Byrd did not look kindly on Florida spending projects, Graham staffers say. Graham likely will cross paths with Byrd again next year, when the federal transportation spending program comes up for reauthorization. Florida currently gets less than 80 cents back for every dollar it pays in gasoline taxes, which one Graham staffer terms "a rip-off." For the most part, though, Graham seems to have avoided both confrontation and headline grabbing political events. Graham's image appears only occasionally on TV or in the press, even in Florida. After nearly a decade in Washington, Graham is so little-known there that during a recent stroll on the long block from the Capitol to his office, he elicited not so much as a hint of recognition from passers-by. To be sure, Graham has many admirers in Washington. They tend to be                 Copr. West 1998 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY                                                                      Page 13 6/1/96 FLATREND 36                                                                                (Publication page reference are not available for this document.) people who abhor the current gridlock and applaud the senator's willingness to work with Republicans for the common good. "What I would say is he's done a terrific job in the Senate," says Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "Almost everybody respects Graham as one of the thoughtful centrists, one of a handful of people who keeps things together and makes real contributions." Sen. Rockefeller describes Graham as fiercely independent, which his peers respect. "I think the thing about Bob Graham that is very important to understand is he marches to his own drummer," he says. In describing how Graham often keeps his own counsel even among fellow Senate Democrats, Rockefeller recalls a 1993 vote on the federal budget in which Graham's vote was crucial. Graham was unhappy with some Medicare cuts he deemed too drastic-cuts Rockefeller had negotiated personally. For days, Graham still kept silent. Rockefeller was afraid to lobby his friend. "A little voice inside of me said 'Jay, don't say a word to Bob. Don't say award. He is going to come to his own decision and if you come in and try to influence him, it's not going to be a happy result.' And that's from me, his friend," Rockefeller  says. At the last moment, Graham told fellow Democrats he'd vote for their budget. When Graham does move into the spotlight, it is almost invariably to address a Florida issue. He was uncharacteristically strident in opposing a recent Republican plan to make block grants to states for Medicaid that didn't include allowances for population growth in future years, for example. "He stood between that and passage and said, look at what you are doing to the growth states," says Mitchell W. Berger, the Democratic Party's Florida Finance Committee Chairman. Similarly, when President Clinton wanted the U.S. military to invade and occupy Haiti in 1994 to ensure the return of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, there was strong opposition in Congress. But Graham supported the plan. "Bob Graham was the person in the Senate who was rallying the cause," says Berger, a Tennessee transplant and close friend to Vice President Al Gore. The U.S. occupation, in turn, staved off a potential flood of illegal Haitian immigrants to Florida and probably saved the state millions of dollars in social services costs. But in his biggest national assignment, as 1994 chairman of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, the result was unspectacular. Although his committee raised a record $25 million, including $13 million that went directly to candidates, it couldn't stop the                 Copr. West 1998 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY                                                                      Page 14 6/1/96 FLATREND 36                                                                                (Publication page reference are not available for this document.) Republican stampede, as the G.O.P. won 10 Democratic seats to gain a 54-46 Senate majority. Arguably, there wasn't much Graham could do to reverse events-the Republicans won a majority of governorships for the first time in 40 years. But he still took criticism. "His shot at the big time was chairing the DSCC, and he blew it," says one Capitol Hill reporter who's followed Graham for years. "You could argue that if he had done a better job campaigning for Senate Democrats, they wouldn't have lost so much influence." On budget questions, Graham characterizes himself as a fiscal conservative, and compared to other Democrats he. Paul Hewitt, executive director of the National Taxpayers Union, says Graham voted to cut a net $2 billion from the federal budget during 1995. On its face, that sounds pretty good, but when compared to total federal spending, it amounts to only 0.125%. Hewitt says Graham's voting record puts him closer to the most conservative member of the Senate, Hank Brown (R-Colo.), who voted for the total spending reductions of $40.8 billion, than to the most liberal, Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.), who voted for a net spending increase of $47.6 billion. But it's still safe to say he's in the middle of the road when it comes to cutting federal spending. During the year, Graham voted to cut foreign aid by $1.1 billion and defense by $4 billion. Plus, he favored tough welfare reform and even Medicare spending reductions. "He's obviously among the most fiscally conservative Democrats in the Senate," says Hewitt. Graham was faced earlier this year with a difficult vote on whether or not to renew the federal price support program for sugar. Graham grew up in northwest Dade on the fringes of the Everglades, and he takes great pride in his environmental record. Conservationists urged him not to back the price support program, which has enabled farmers to plant some 500,000 acres south of Lake Okeechobee. But confronted by intense lobbying from Florida's powerful sugar growers, Graham voted to keep the program, arguing two contradictory points: that Florida farmers would keep growing sugarcane whether or not the price supports existed and that since the European Union subsidizes its sugar farmers the U.S. shouldn't abandon price supports. Graham also voted in favor of a Farm Bill provision to give the Interior Department $200 million to buy up sugar farmland and return it to wetlands. The result: Graham's votes cost consumers $1.4 billion                 Copr. West 1998 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY                                                                      Page 15 6/1/96 FLATREND 36                                                                                (Publication page reference are not available for this document.) annually in higher sugar prices, according to the government's General Accounting Office, and taxpayers $200 million for land acquisition. But Graham avoided making enemies. Stuart D. Strahl, executive director of the National Audubon Society's Everglades ecosystem restoration campaign, acknowledges disappointment over the senator's actions. "I'd say disappointment would be a good word, but we are certainly not surprised," Strahl says. If Graham has to struggle with tough decisions, he finds it even harder to talk about them. Om a conference call with a group of Florida reporters shortly after the Senate passed the Farm Bill, one asked his opinion on a proposed penny-per-pound tax on sugar to help pay for Everglades restoration. Graham wouldn't touch it "My focus has been on getting this $200 million entitlement" and the land sale provisions, he said. Reflecting his middle of the road philosophy, Graham works well with Republicans. He and Arizona Sen. John McCain, for example, have zeroed in on campaign finance reform, an issue that is not making either man especially popular on Capitol Hill right now. Sen. McCain, who also has teamed with Graham on mutual problems Arizona and Florida face obtaining sufficient Veterans Administration benefits, came to Washington with him in 1987. Then, Democrats held a Senate majority, but nevertheless, Graham sought McCain out. "When I was in the minority, he always showed me the greatest respect and included me on issues," McCain says. "That is not as common as you would think." Coming into his own at last  Graham takes special pride in his close relationship with Florida's Republican junior senator, Connie Mack. In what for Graham passes off as an outburst, he likened Mack to an "ideological wacko" during Mack's 1988 Senate campaign against Buddy MacKay. But today Graham counts Mack as a good friend. In some respects, Graham appears finally to be coming into his own in Washington. He got his Finance Committee seat in 1995, and with the unexpected retirements of Democratic Senators David Pryor and Bill Bradley this year, Graham will move in less than two years from back bench to middle of the committee in terms of seniority. He also made the Armed Services Committee in 1993, another high-profile assignment. If Graham is thinking about returning to Tallahassee, Ornstein suggests it is because life on Capitol Hill has become unpleasant for pragmatists like him. Republican Senators like Nancy Kassebaum, Alan Simpson and Bill Cohen all have chosen to retire this year. "It's not                Copr. West 1998 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY                                                                      Page 16 6/1/96 FLATREND 36                                                                                (Publication page reference are not available for this document.) just Democrats who are bailing out right now," he says. Graham says almost the same thing, noting that some 13 senators plan to retire this year, including respectful fellow Democrats like New Jerseys Bill Bradley and Georgia's Sam Nunn. "The past year and a half has not been one of the most productive times for the Congress," he says. If Graham is unhappy in the nation's capital, he retains a large and influential fan club in Florida. Former aides like Reed, Herndon and Villella believe he's likely to come back, and seem eager for it to happen. And some of Graham's longtime friends also suggest coming back to Tallahassee wouldn't necessarily be the final chapter of a storybook career. One Republican campaign strategist argues Graham's only hope of becoming president is to run for governor in 1998. It is the only way, the strategist says, he could hope to leapfrog people like Gore and Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey in the party hierarchy. "This is all about positioning," says the strategist of Graham's possible run for governor. "If he wants to be president, he has to run for governor." Friends and supporters believe Graham could use his consensus building powers to reach bipartisan solutions to some of Florida's structural problems. That, in turn, might polish his image as a strong executive. After all, no one since John F. Kennedy has stepped straight from the Senate to the Oval Office, through Bob Dole is trying. But plenty of governors have run, and won. Graham aides scoff at such reasoning. "Graham's not thinking about this stuff. He's not weighing all these arguments and won't until the year ends," protests one of his top staffers. Graham may want to look hard and long at perks, prospects and security of his present job compared to the one he may yearn for back in Tallahassee. Certainly not everyone will welcome him back with open arms. "If he wants to come home," says an adviser to Buddy MacKay, "then his record gets the spotlight shined on it." What's more, he may find that his caution and his centrism, which have made him uncomfortable in Washington's extremist climate, may be out of style in Tallahassee, too. "You know what's in the middle of the road these days?" asks Hewitt of the National Taxpayers Union. "Road kill." Related Article: Dade's "Best All-Around Boy"                Copr. West 1998 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY                                                                      Page 17 6/1/96 FLATREND 36                                                                                (Publication page reference are not available for this document.)  Bob Graham is one of the wealthiest men in the U.S. Senate, thanks to a hurricane, the Great Depression and a shrewd older brother. Graham's father , Ernest R. "Cap" Graham, was a farmer, one-time gold miner and World War I Army captain who came to Dade County after the war to run a plantation in the Everglades for the Pennsylvania Sugar Co. Unfortunately for the company, but fortuitously for Graham, the 1926 hurricane devasted the sugar plantation, known as Pensacola. A few years later, the Great Depression stuck, again wiping out the farm. In the 1930s, the company agreed to give Cap Graham the 3,000-acre plantation to avoid paying property taxes on it. The elder Graham turned the land into a dairy farm and prospered. By 1936, when he was 51, his stature in the community was such that he won a seat in the Florida Legislature, where he served eight years. Cap Graham's first wife had died of cancer, and early in 1936 he married Hilda Simmons Graham. Ten months later in November, just days after he was elected to the Legislature, the youngest of his four children was born, Daniel Robert. The littlest Graham excelled even in his youth. When he was 16, Bob Graham named Dade County's "best all-around boy" by the Miami Senior High's student body and earned Phi Beta Kappa honors at University of Florida, where he also was admitted to the prestigious Blue Key society. At the University of Florida he met his future wife, Adele Khoury of Miami Shores, and as legend has it, told her he would be governor one day. They married in 1959, and he got a job in Washington interning for young Dade Congressman Dante Fascekk. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1963 and got elected to the state legislature in 1966, when he was 30. He became a state senator in 1970. Along the way, he and Adele raised four daughters. For all his talents, Bob Graham's political rise was aided in no small measure by his two older half-brothers at Harvard Law School and married Katherine Meyer, whose father owned the Washington Post. Phil Graham took over management of the paper from his father-in-law in the 1940s. But while Phil was brilliant at business, he was a manic-depressive. In 1963, he shot and killed himself, leaving Katherine Graham to run                 Copr. West 1998 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY                                                                      Page 18 6/1/96 FLATREND 36                                                                                (Publication page reference are not available for this document.) the Post and to become in her own right one of the best-known businesswomen in America. Today, the senator's nephew Donald Graham runs the publishing company. If Phil and Katherine Graham made the family name famous, second brother Bill, 12 years older than Bob, made his brother rich. In 1962, with Dade growing rapidly, Bill Graham began developing the Pensacola property. After law school, Bob Graham joined the family business until he took up politics full-time. Today, Miami Lakes is a five-square-mile planned community with 23,000 residents and 4.5 million square feet of office, commercial and industrial space, about one-third of which is still owned and managed by the Graham Cos. The company expects to build another 2 million square feet of office and commercial space over the next 15 to 20 years. The Graham Cos. still milk 2,100 cows in Moore Haven and operate a bull-breeding farm in Georgia. One of the few controversies that has dogged Bob Graham in his political career is the fact that the Graham Cos. benefit from a state law that lets them pay taxes on undeveloped Miami Lakes land as agricultural property, instead of commercial of residential land. In 1978, when Bob Graham wanted to run for governor, he financed his campaign in part by selling $500,000 worth of Graham Cos. stock. And although he's worked in public service since 1966, Sen. Graham today puts his net worth at between $5 million and $10 million. "We couldn't have done what we do in life if it had not been for Bill," Adele Graham has said of her business-savvy brother-in-law. TABULAR OR GRAPHIC MATERIAL SET FORTH IN THIS DOCUMENT IS NOT DISPLAYABLE  illustration photograph ---INDEX REFERENCES--- KEY WORDS: POLTICANS  NEWS SUJECT: Securities Registrations (REG) NEWS CATEGORY: COVER STORY Word Count: 6000 6/1/96 FLATREND END OF DOCUMENT                 Copr. West 1998 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works   <o:p></o:p> Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Williams, Megan Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Magazine Article Vol. No./Issue No. Volume and issue number for the newspaper (if available) Vol. 39, No. 2 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 Man in the middle, a reappraisal Subject The topic of the resource Graham, Bob Gubernatorial Election Description An account of the resource Article explores the political career of Bob Graham as he considers whether to run for governor again. In order, to measure his success the Florida Trend Magazine is looking at the his political record in both Tallahassee, FL and Washington, DC. Part of looking at Graham's career in Florida involved looking into his stance on the death penalty, which is when Michael Mello is quoted on page ten of this document. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Poppe, David Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Florida Trend (Trend Magazines Inc.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-06-01 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 15 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