4 20 70 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/89a9c7c696998f6cd1196f9b7b9916f8.jpg 4113f0bf7b29f05c26dac64caf850f42 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 Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Kniskern, Kyle Text Any textual data included in the document [written in cursive, with pen, above the article] Mike – Thought you would like to have these two articles. [Above the title] Colman McCarthy [Title] Dead Men Talking So, after Hollywood and Susan Sarandon, the bestseller list, gigs on “Oprah” and “PrimeTime Live,” honorary degrees and more than 25 speaking invitations a week, how is Sister Helen Prejean handling celebrity? Much the way she lived with obscurity: keeping the faith and sharing her energy, with no holding back on either. The 57-year-old Louisiana nun who entered the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille at 18 left the anonymous life in 1993 when Random House published her book “Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States.” Shortly after, Susan Sarandon read it and went to talk with Prejean in New Orleans. The actress brought the book to Tim Robbins. In March, the film he directed – also titled “Dead Man Walking” – won an Oscar for Sarandon and her portrayal of Sister Helen. An estimated 8 million people have seen the film, which means they know a bit more about the ritual of state-sanctioned killing. “This movie shows the process of execution,” Prejean says. “Beyond the rhetoric of all the legislations who score their political points for being tough on crime, what it all boils down to is that a handful of people are hired to kill a guy in the middle of the night.” Among the Speaking invitations Prejean most softens to are those from legal aid groups representing death row prisoners. Most have recently disbanded, following the elimination of federal funding by Congress. One of the few survivors is the Virginia Capital Representation Resource Center. Prejean helped it by being the main speaker on May 26 at a fund-raising even at a Jesuit high school in Washington. Short-haired, understatedly dressed in a blue suit and blouse, Prejean is a natural storyteller with a talent for wryness and little taste for polemics. The factual arguments for ending the death penalty – it doesn’t deter, racial bias, excessive costs – are offered like notes in the margin. The main text is stories of people she has met since first going into death row in 1984 at the Louisiana state prison in Angola. Some stories are about men whose executions she witnessed and whom she counseled to ask forgiveness for their crimes. Some are about victims’ families, people Prejean – admitting past cowardice – was once afraid of meeting and chose to avoid. Then she went to a victims’ support group and heard families describe how people like her avoided them. Prejean praises prison officials who quit their jobs rather than cooperate with the process of executions. Of politicians who boast of their zeal for the death penalty, she asks: Where are they when the prisoners are killed? Why don’t they come in the darkness of midnight to throw the switch or do the injecting themselves rather than be asleep in their beds? “Witnessing an execution,” Prejean says of the first man she saw die in the electric chair, “Left an indelible mark on my soul.” It was, she says, a rebaptism. Compared with some longtime opponents of the death penalty – Marie Deans, Michael Mello, Stephen Bright, William Brennan, Joseph Ingle, Alvin Bronstein – Prejean is a newcomer. Her awakening came in the early 1980s when nuns were being killed in Latin America and ones at home were out of their convents and habits, acting on the church’s social teachings on solidarity with the poor and exposing the structural causes of poverty. Prejean moved into the St. Thomas housing project in New Orleans. “It was a shock,” she told the Progressive magazine recently. “Growing up in the ‘40s and ‘50s, I had known black people only as my family’s servants. Now it was my turn to serve them. It didn’t take long to see that for poor people, especially black poor people, there was a greased track to prison and death row.” From the housing project in New Orleans, Prejean began visiting another one – the Angola prison – to be a spiritual adviser to men awaiting their deaths. That ministry continues, plus a new one with its own set of difficulties. She describes it as trying to inform “white, affluent people in the suburbs. The more affluent you are, the more separated and the more afraid you are of the poor and ‘the criminal element,’ the more you take the hard line and say, ‘Those people need to be executed.’ They’re the toughest audience.” It is fitting that the work would be the hardest for Prejean. In the film, the father of a murder victim says to the nun, “I don’t have your faith.” She answers: “It’s not faith, it’s work.” 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 Dead Men Talking Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McCarthy, Colman 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 1996-06-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 JPG 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant New Orleans, LA Subject The topic of the resource Corporal punishment Corporal punishment of children--Religious aspects--Catholic Church Description An account of the resource The passionate outreach against the death penalty by Sister Helen Prejean. As a Catholic nun she details her views and advocacy for those on death row. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Colman McCarthy, "Dead Men Talking," June 4, 1996. Corporal Punishment https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/94fe5f41f242c52c70a91a8354fca4ed.jpg 2d05388c6e7e6100b31f225b640ee820 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 Murder case demonstrates sabotage of justice / Public contempt justified in Spaziano delay The criminal justice system is broken. It was not broken by cops or criminals, by crime victims or taxpayers. It was broken by judges, lawyers, legislators and ideologues who scorn the democratic process. The case of Joseph “Crazy Joe” Spaziano, currently of Florida’s death row, is a case in point. How long does it take to bring justice to a vicious murderer? In Spaziano’s case, the answer is 20 years and, as of this writing, still counting. The answer, if a judge is foolish enough to grant this psychopath a new trial, may be never. Spaziano, a motorcycle gang member, was convicted in 1976 of the murder of an 18-year-old girl. He was sentenced to death. In 1996, lawyers, some of whom are ideologically opposed to the death penalty, and the Miami Herald newspaper are crowing that poor Spaziano is an innocent man. Spaziano has also been convicted of raping a 16-year-old girl and of gouging out her eyes with his knife. He is a suspect in three other murders. His own family has said publicly they are terrified that he will be released and will then kill them, as he has threatened to do. In other words, Joe Spaziano is not the kind of man whom any rational person would assume to be innocent, no matter what technical problems there were in his trial. The sole grounds for the passionate belief in Spaziano’s innocence is that a witness who testified that Spaziano showed him two bodies where the murder victim’s body was found has, 20 years later, suddenly claimed that he lied at the trial. When this occurred, Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles ordered the state police to conduct an investigation. They did so and found ample evidence that the witness is lying now but told the truth at the trial. There is no corroboration of the witness’s claim that he lied at the trial and is now telling the truth. Even after 20 years to think about it, Spaziano cannot supply an alibi. The witness is now unable to get his new story straight. But there is corroboration of his original testimony. Spaziano’s brother and one of his former Outlaw gang members have both testified that Spaziano volunteered to them that he had killed two women in Florida and was worried about “a kid” who knew about the murder. “The kid” of course is the witness who now claims 20 years later that he made up the whole story and never saw any bodies. When this witness’s sister asked her brother why he ha changed his story after so long, she testified that he replied, “I’m tired of being harassed by Spaziano’s people, lawyers and the media.” The logical inference to be made from that testimony is that while lawyers have played games in the courts, fighting off one execution date after another, somebody has been trying to persuade a man to change his testimony. I hope that the trial judge will have the courage to base his decision on the testimony and not on the hysteria of the Herald or the wild rhetoric of Spaziano’s lawyers. You can be sure if Spaziano ever returns to society, he will kill again. When he does, those who helped him defeat justice, will also have blood on their hands. But either way, this sorry spectacle of justice delayed is why an increasing number of Americans looks upon the criminal justice system with contempt and disdain. It also shows how ideology attempts to subvert democracy. Any judge who opposes the death penalty should resign or at least recuse himself from all capital cases. For a judge to thwart justice simply because he disagrees with a democratically arrived at decision is disgraceful. And others who oppose the death penalty should take their debate to the legislature – and not try to sabotage justice. What a foul system it is that ignores the innocent dead and squanders millions on the living killers. Charley Reese is an Orlando Sentinel columnist. Editor’s note: On Monday, a judge granted a new trial for Spaziano. [image – photo of Charley Reese] [image caption – Charley Reese] 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. Ramirez-Portillo, Jessica 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 Murder Case Demonstrates Sabotage of Justice Description An account of the resource With renewed interest in giving convicted murderer Joe Spaziano a new trial. Mello expresses the lack of legitimacy on this movement and specifically addresses the witness who claimed that he lied on the trial 20 years after the case. Mello closes his writing by impugning the idea of setting Spaziano free and how people in protest of death row may potentially deny justice to Spaziano's victims. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mello, Michael 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 1999-01-24 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 JPG 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Subject The topic of the resource Criminal courts--United States Spaziano, Joe Equality before the law--United States Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Mello, Micheal. "Murder Case Demonstrates Sabotage of Justice, Public Contempt Justified in Spaziano Delay." The Tribune, January 24, 1996, A7. "Crazy Joe" Spaziano criminal justice death penalty Florida Judicial proceedings https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/3f112562bfb8e8c33439c9ca7bdc7060.jpg 2b3c8096bdbdde6240a6a018f6a3ebbe https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/b8ad860aee948e44060b6eac5d2a23d1.jpg bece773b9f1852144c2f1ad43e5e248f 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] In Hunter Case, Blame is Widespread [Author] by Michael Mello I teach legal ethics at Vermont Law School, and not infrequently I offer Mr. Hunter's practice to my students as an example of how it is possible for a person to be both a good lawyer and a good person. Now that Mr. Hunter faces disbarment I will use his case to illustrate a point about law and power: that if you take on the hard cases and the un-popular clients, the establishment will come after you. Clarence Darrow was indicted for jury tampering; William Kunstler was held in contempt in Chicago. In weighing Will Hunter's fitness to practice law in Vermont, it is important to remember that, in representing poor people and unpopular causes, Mr. Hunter was not only acting as a good person and a good citizen, he was acting as a good and ethical lawyer. In living the bar's directive to serve the community and its injunction never to turn away a client because the client is unpopular, Mr. Hunter was acting in the finest and most noble traditions of the legal profession in America. "Obey the little laws and break the great ones. That's the preamble to their Constitution." Andre Lorde wrote. Mr. Hunter got it backwards, but that, I think, is to his credit. I have never met Will Hunter, but I have met some of his former clients. The voices of the indigent people for whom Mr. Hunter was the "lawyer of last resort" have been conspicuously absent from the public conversation about whether Mr. Hunter is fit to continue practicing law. Mr. Hunter's principal sin seems to have been overcommitment, an inability to say "no" to those in need of legal aid. But it seems to me that the very legal establishment that seeks to banish Hunter from its midst is partially responsible for the reality that no lawyer other than Will Hunter would accept these people as clients. The bar ought to be asking why Will Hunter has been the lawyer of last resort for so many indigent people in need of legal aid. Where were the Vermont lawyers? Where, indeed, were his prosecutor and judges? And just when government is getting out of the business of providing legal aid for poor people, many private firms are becoming less and less willing or able to take on pro bono work. Now that paying clients are becoming harder to find, private practitioners are becoming less likely to work for free. A few years ago, John Dooley and Alan Housman wrote that proposed budget cuts to the Legal Services Corp. would "not meet the legal needs of poor people; in fact they would deny poor people the full range of legal services available to those who can afford an attorney." Those words were published 13 years ago. The funding cuts feared by Dooley and Housman are now reality. Mr. Hunter is not perfect- he's not a perfect lawyer, and he's not a perfect human being. None of us is- including Mr. Hunter's prosecutor and his judges. Give me an unlimited budget and the power to compel disclosure, and I'll find enough evidence to convince a gung-ho prosecutor that my target has acted "unethically." The ethical rules are by nature vague, and anyway complex human behavior doesn't lend itself to pigeonholing by codification. Look hard enough into any lawyer's practice, and you'll find at least some arguable improprieties. At a time when legal services for the poor are being crippled by funding cuts, we need the few Will Hunters among us- we need them now more than ever. And it is fair to ask his prosecutor and his judges: With Will Hunter banished from the bar, who will do the important work he has been doing for such a long time? Will Mr. Hunter's prosecutor fulfill that role? Will his judges? Will the regular members of the Vermont bar? Will Hunter performed an honorable role within the Vermont legal establishment. He took on the cases other attorneys wouldn't. Those other attorneys wouldn't say these poor people don't deserve any lawyer; they deserve some other lawyer. For years, Will Hunter was that "other" lawyer. So, if Will Hunter is disbarred, those most in need of legal help- and least able to pay for it- will lose one tireless, brilliant, quirky advocate. He will be missed by his community and his clients, and [end page one] [start page two] that's not a claim many attorneys can make. Will Hunter has already paid a high price for taking seriously the bar's injunction to represent the poor and the unpopular. His home was ransacked by federal agents. His name and his reputation have been tarnished by the commissars of ethics. Now those same commissars want to disbar him. Disbarring Mr. Hunter would be a "tragedy," as his prosecutor reportedly said. It would be a tragedy, but not for Mr. Hunter alone. It would be a tragedy for those in need of legal aid who will now have no lawyer at all. Most of all, it seems to me, disbarring Mr. Hunter would be a tragic and demeaning act for the Vermont bar. The bar should be better than this. The people of Vermont deserve better than this. Every year I look for role models for my ethics students; good people who do good work as lawyers. My hope always is that perhaps a few of those students will work for those among us who need legal aid but can't afford to buy it. Then the Will Hunters of the world might be able to say "no" once in a while- knowing that the client turned away will be able to find another lawyer. In the meantime I'll send all such clients to Vermont's Professional Conduct Board. Michael Mello of White River Junction is a professor of law at the Vermont Law School. [end 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. Johnston, Spencer 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 In Hunter Case, Blame Is Widespread Description An account of the resource Michael Mello comments on the disbarment of fellow lawyer Will Hunter and the implications for the future of the legal profession in Vermont. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mello, Michael Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Mello, Michael. "In Hunter Case, Blame is Widespread." Rutland Daily Herald, July 23, 1996, p.1. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-07-23 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 JPGs 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Subject The topic of the resource Legal reform Disbarment of lawyers 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 Royalton, VT https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/4955d7d829a26de046034cde3a7de378.jpg fbda1189e56a50e7b659e18410ed0d1d 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 [Publisher] The Gainesville Sun [Date] Wednesday, July 31, 1996 [Title] 'Killer to get new sentence' [Subtitle] 'An appeals court orders resentencing for the Death Row inmate who raped and killed a 94-year-old woman.' [Author] Aaron Hoover A man sent to Florida's Death Row nearly 20 years ago for the rape and murder of a 94-year-old Gainesville woman must be sentenced all over again, an appeals court has ruled. Steven Todd Booker, convicted of first-degree murder and a survivor of at least three death warrants for the 1977 rape and murder of Duck Pond resident Lorine Harmon will appear before a jury in a Alachua County and be resentenced in the case as a result of the decision this month by the federal 11th Circuit Court of Appeal. Prosecutors decried the development as an example of a flawed system that allows death penalty appeals to drag on for decades quote this is an example of why the appeal IT system is entirely broken," said state attorney rod Smith. "No one is saying he didn't do it. . . but 20 years after the fact we're deciding to reconstruct a penalty phase on a brutal murder." But a lawyer who has represented Booker had a decidedly different view. Michael Mello a Vermont law professor who has worked extensively on Booker's case, said the state is to blame for much of the delay. U.S. Judge Maurice Paul first ruled Booker should be resentenced in 1988, but appeals by the Attorney General's Office delayed a final decision until this month, said Mello, a law professor at Vermont Law School. "Steve Booker's case is the case I always use in our capital punishment seminar to illustrate these delays in death penalties that prosecutors and politicians are always talking about - they're as often or not caused by prosecutors," Mello said. A jury in Alachua county convicted Booker, now 42, of first degree murder, rape by force, and burglary for breaking into Harman's apartment, raping and killing her on Nov. 9, 1977. After his conviction, Booker wrote to Circuit Judge John Crews, now deceased, asking to be put to death. Harman, an assistant post master in her native Maryland, had moved to Gainesville in 1956 when her husband retired. She went back to Maryland briefly after Frank Harman died, but later settled permanently in Gainesville, where she was known for her independence - frequently walking into the now defunct Primrose Inn restaurant downtown for lunch, for example. according to Mello, jury instructions at the time of Booker's sentencing directed juries to consider only certain narrowly defined reasons why he might be spared. Those instructions prevented the jury form considering crucial evidence about Booker's mental health, he said. "The list of mitigating circumstances said the jury should consider some kinds of craziness, and Booker didn't have those kinds of craziness, he had other kinds of craziness," Mello said. Those included alcohol abuse and "a hideous family background," he said. A 1987 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Florida Death Row inmate James Hitchcock's case found identical jury instructions unconstitutional, meaning that all relevant evidence could be introduced in death penalty defenses, Mello said. The decision affected "two or three dozen cases" including Booker's cases, he said. The date for the new sentencing hearing has not been set, but Smith indicated he was not pleased to face the challenge. "you have to reconstruct somewhat what's already occurred and represent what occurred at the trial phase so the jury will understand at the penalty phase what you're talking about," he said. "It's an outrageous assignment to any office to go back and try any portion of a case under those circumstances." Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Armel, Ryan Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper 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 Killer to Get New Sentence Subject The topic of the resource Mello, Michael Booker, Steven 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 1996-07-31 Language A language of the resource English Description An account of the resource Steven Booker, a man sentenced to Death Row for the rape and murder of a 94-year-old woman nearly 20 years ago is being resentenced due to a decision made by Florida's 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hoover, Aaron 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. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Gainesville, FL Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Hoover, Aaron. “Killer to Get New Sentence.” The Gainesville Sun, July 31, 1996. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 JPG 300 DPI https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/82284e32b2cb8d5f02c84da3ecc2919b.jpg c3eb00ee5df408534d8545d8eb9991c3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bar Disgraces Itself In Hunter Case Language A language of the resource English Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-08-13 Description An account of the resource This is largely a commentary by Michael Mello about all the flaws in the disbarment case against Will Hunter. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Newspaper article Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Rutland Daily Herald Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Scan of a Newspaper article 300 resolution DIP Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Vermont https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/c756d328c70696876432fa4c53f62174.jpg 88406e468c26db32bc8b9525ef6f7224 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 Dickinson, Terra Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Altersitz, Haleigh Text Any textual data included in the document [Title] Bar Disgraces Itself In Hunter Case [Content] I wish to thank the dozen or so people who called and wrote me responding to commentary on the Will Hunter case. Their feedback was Illuminating. The more I hear from other lawyers, the more I like Will Hunter. The four lawyers who published letters in support of the bar’s prosecution of Will Hunter revealed more about the writer’s own agendas than about L’Affair Hunter. [Title of main content] Commentary By: Michael Mello [Main Content] Stephen Ellis (July 25) missed my main point: that providing effective counsel to poor people is of paramount concern, and that the choice facing Mr. Hunter’s clients was not Mr. Hunter or some other, “better” Vermont lawyer. The choice was between Will Hunter or no lawyer. (The non-lawyer who contacted me didn’t seem to have any trouble under-standing this point.) As a longtime capital public defender in Florida, I think I have a pretty strong appreciation of poor people’s need for legal aid. By citing statistics that seem to me misleading, Leslie Black (July 30) makes the disappointing argument that poor people in Vermont already have sufficient legal aid. Her numbers are misleading because they don’t include the numbers of people who were not able to find a lawyer willing and able to work for free. Any legal aid attorney worth her salt will tell you she can represent only a fraction of people who need such aid. And if Ms. Black thinks the Vermont public defender system is sufficiently resourced, she really should talk to the people who work in those offices. There is one promising bit of news on the horizon. Last week, the Vermont Supreme Court rejected the bar’s recommendation of disbarment for Vincent Illuzzi – on charges far more serious than the niggling technicalities that from the basis of the bar’s persecution of Will Hunter. This suggests that the court does not simply rubber stamp whatever recommendations the court receives from the churls at the Couduct Board. That’s good news for anyone interested in seeing justice done to Will Hunter and his former clients. If Vince Illuzzi shouldn’t be disbarred, then Will Hunter shouldn’t be disbarred. The court ruled that the Conduct Board had over-stepped its authority. The court reiterated the legal test for disbarment: “Disbarment is warranted where the misconduct is done knowingly, the injury is serious or potentially serious, and there is some benefit to the lawyer or another. Moreover, conduct resulting in disbarment is generally criminal as well.” The Hunter panel did not even pretend to demonstrate why the blizzard of petty charges against Mr. Hunter met the test for disbarment. Even accepting the panel’s rendition of the facts, Mr. Hunter’s misconduct was not “done knowingly.” The injury caused by the misconduct was not “serious or potentially serious” – indeed, notably absent was any articulation of harm caused by Mr. Hunter’s peccadillos. Nor did the asserted “misconduct” result in “some benefit to the lawyer or another.” And none of the bar’s storm of petty charges is “criminal.” At most, all but one of the bar’s complaints against Mr. Hunter – the kinds of sins committed by busy and successful, albeit overworked, lawyers at one time or another. The potentially serious charge – the money accusation – does not come close to justifying disbarment under the legal test for disbarment ignored by the panel. Perhaps the bar’s biggest howler is that I am bringing the bar into public disrepute by criticzing the bar’s war on Will Hunter. But is seems to me that any wound to the bar’s public image is a self-inflicted wound. If the bar is worries that its persecution of Will Hunter is bringing the bar into public dishonor, than the solution is to stop the persecution. Find out whether the prosecutor did, in fact, attempt to strong-arm Mr. Hunter’s clients into becoming informants against him. Find out whether the “hearing” panel chair intimidated witnesses favorable to Mr. Hunter. Find out why the panel’s recommendation opinion was so inept. Several letter writers implied that unsolicited client complaints were the genesis of the bar’s investigation of Mr. Hunter. I wonder. Whiffs of possible prosecutorial misconduct filter from the case’s factual record and beyond. For instance, on July 1 the Valley News published a letter from a client of Mr. Hunter: “I am one of his clients who was contacted by a female agent of the board, who was stated she worked for (Hunter’s bar prosecutor), and that if I wanted to make a complaint against Mr. Hunter she would take my complaint over the telephone. Though I told her I had been frustrated with Mr. Hunter’s actions many times in the past, I had no interest in making a formal complaint. She continued to press me until finally I ended the con-versation.” That was not the end of the pressure, however. “The very next day I received a second call from her reminding me that I could make a formal com-plaint if I wanted. Again, I told her no, but she pressed. She told me the complaint didn’t have to come directly from me – that they could act like the police and pursue a complaint on my behalf. I once more declined, and hung up.” These prosecutorial pressure tactics are more serious than allegations made by the bar disciplinary panel against Mr. Hunter. This client described how frustrating and down-right maddening Mr. Hunter could be. But, when push came to shove, she writes that he “has been a stead-fast ally when others have given up … He has been honest and honorable in all our legal dealings.” Anyway, the feedback from my column impelled me to dig a little further into the case of the Vermont Bar against Will Hunter. What I found was that this case is about far more than Mr. Hunter’s fitness to continue practicing law. The real issue here is whether the panel members and bar prosecutor are capable of conforming themselves to these selfsame ethical requirements. The disbarment opinion rendered by the three-per-son panel of the Professional Conduct Board is at best inept and at worst malicious. In either case, the opinion reflects and ethical obtuseness that would be laughable if a person’s career were not at stake. The opinion is a disgrace to the Vermont bar. There are two things wrong with the bar’s opinion recommending disbarment. The first is its slip-shod substance. The second is its malicious style. The opinion is more of a partisan press release thana reasoned articulation of grounds rendered by a neutral and unbiased tribunal. One Good test of the integrity of a legal document – and of its author – do, in fact, stand for the propositions for which they are cited. Again and again, the panel’s opinion in Mr. Hunter’s case fails this test. Key cases do not stand for the propositions for which the panel cites them, and holdings of cases are misrepresented. The panel’s reckless disregard of accuracy is not limited to its citation of case law; the opinion’s treatment of the factual record is equally cavalier. The panel made findings of fact that deviate from the stipulations that were submitted; failed to make findings and law in a manner that suggests a lack of impartiality and per-judgment. The references to the factual record are often misleading. But the panel gives away its game in what its opinion does not say, the evidence its simply ignores. Save for a few desultory and vacuous references, the panel’s opinion essentially ignores the large quantity of directly relevant evidence – evidence given by everyone from judges to lawyers to former clients – favorable to Mr. Hunter. In short, the opinion is a hatchet job. By contrast, one quality of Mr. Hunter’s legal documents is that they are trustworthy – when Mr. Hunter says a case stands for a proposition, then it does. Judge Cheever testified that Mr. Hunter’s “cases were well cited. He didn’t send me off to rely on a case that didn’t stand for the proposition that he was quoting for it. And the facts that he stated also turned out to be true.” Of course, the panel’s smear opinion ignored Judge Cheever’s testimony – as it ignored the testimony of two other judges and one magistrate who testified to Will Hunter’s effective representation of his clients in matters before them. One might think that an ethics panel would scrupulously avoid even the appearance of a lack of impartiality or bias. One would be wrong. In this case, shortly before things got nasty, Mr. Hunter had represented Vincent Illuzzi. In his capacity as counsel for Mr. Illuzzi, Mr. Hunter sued Professional Conduct Board – including the members of the panel – in federal district court. Thus, Mr. Hunter’s disbarment case was com-posed of individuals who were named defendants in a federal lawsuit brought by Mr. Hunter on behalf of Mr. Illuzzi. Given such ineptitude, it should surprise no one that the opinion’s blunderbuss methodology utterly misses the issue that is the heart of the Will Hunter affair; Does the entirety of Mr. Hunter’s practice his-tory command the conclusion that he is unfit to practice law in Vermont? This is a subtle decision requireing an appreciating of nuance – qualitied utterly lacking in the panel’s opinion. It is simply wrong for the panel to look only as Mr. Hunter’s sins in isolation and to conclude blithely that Mr. Hunter’s transgressions exhaust the entire truth of his life as a lawyer. By judging Mr. Hunter solely by his moments of weakness, lapses and limits, the panel was oblivious to the principle upon which the disbarment rule is based: proportionately. Proportionality is both a principle on which the laws of punishment are based and a commonly under-stood aspect of human affairs. Proportionality, for instance, prevents the police from shooting jaywalkers, even though the latter are breaking the law. In short, “proportionality” is the idea that the punishment should fit the crime. To be sure, the big sinners who flagrantly violate certain norms of professional conduct should be dis-barred. From what I know of Mr. Hunter’s case he is not a sinner. The panel's opinion does nothing to persuade me otherwise. William hunter is the kind of lawyer many of us wish we had the courage to be. The line between respect an jealousy can be fine. That, in the end, might explain the bars churlish persecution of one the finest attorneys in this or any other state. The Vermont Supreme Court should entirely disregard the panel's opinion. Further, the court should appoint an independent prosecutor and hearing board to investigate (1) the reasons for the shameful opinion issued by the panel, and (2) whether sanctionable or civilly actionable prosecutorial misconduct occurred in the case. Secrecy is a petri dish for governmental corrupttion, incompetence and misconduct. If any good is to come of the persecution of Will Hunter perhaps it will be this. Michael Mello is a professor of law at the Vermont Law School. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bar Disgraces Itself In Hunter Case 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 Description An account of the resource While Micheal Mello was a professor of a Law professor. He wrote a commentary pertaining to the disciplinary proceedings of the attorney Will Hunter by the Vermont Bar. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-08-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 300 DPI 2 JPGs Subject The topic of the resource Hunter, Will Vermont Legal Aid Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Rutland Daily Herald The Bar William A. Hunter https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/e7da01c8b81b0683584aa3442210a6bd.jpg 47bc3a00e57c5aca82a62662361025f9 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/12eaa3d1cc3dbf9ac1785acc1cceafcd.jpg aa103e5ca6186728d224e9bdd9d969e5 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/d25eb17789286307070891ccf96401f4.jpg 23bd598accdc014eb74ecd34fef8f77f https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/925b6e4f30feb7ae52523f60a9723fa9.jpg 936211b0001771cc3ceaff33d1002b3c 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 Vol. No./Issue No. Volume and issue number for the newspaper (if available) vol. 136, issue 229 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. Weber, Sophie Text Any textual data included in the document [Newspaper Title] Rutland H [Subheading] Vol. 136-No. 229 Rutland, Vermont Copyright Monday Morning, September 23, 1996 [Article Title] Cantini Case Highlights Board Action [Start column] MANCHESTER-Lawyer Gerald Cantini has hired many attorneys over the last few years-to handle his divorce, to defend him in malpractice suits, and now, to represent him in a pending professional misconduct investigation. But Cantini’s relationship with two lawyers who chaired the state panel that oversees legal ethics in Vermont has raised questions about whether the board failed to act promptly in a pair of disciplinary cases brought against him. J. Eric Anderson, who chaired the conduct panel from 1989 to 1993, waited nine months before finally blowing the whistle in 1994 on Cantini for allegedly cheating clients, according to former members of their staff. Cantini and Anderson shared an office at the time and Anderson was Cantini’s lawyer in a divorce. Deborah Banse, the lawyer who succeeded Anderson as head of the conduct board, signed a letter, meanwhile, dismissing a unrelated complaint against Cantini while also representing him. Anderson’s hesitancy to move against Cantini, and the appearance of conflict of interest on Banse’s part, may add fuel to the debate over the conduct of the Professional Conduct Board, the 15-member panel that polices lawyers in Vermont. Lawyers who have defended clients before the board have questioned recently whether the disciplinary process itself has adhered to the highest standards of ethics and fairness. Responding to some of these concerns, the Vermont Bar Association named a committee last week to review the lawyer disciplinary process. [Section Title] Possible Conflicts The Cantini case raises questions about lax enforcement and delayed investigation of misconduct allegations because of his ties to former chairs. Anderson, Banse and Cantini all practice in Manchester. The information about their cases comes from conduct board documents, affidavits filed with the board, Bennington County court files, depositions taken in connection with a malpractice lawsuit, and interviews with the principals. Both Cantini and his attorney, Peter Hall of Rutland, declined to comment last week. Cantini has been the target of five malpractice suits in recent years and two complaints to the conduct board, a 15-member panel that enforces the state lawyer disciplinary code. The first complaint dates back to 1989, when Dorset resident Katherine Graf accused Cantini of conflict of interest because he allegedly drafted a defective contract while representing both Graf and a building contractor she had hired. But this complaint-involving a serious allegation of ethical violations- languished at the board for years. Finally, in 1994, conduct board chair Banse wrote a letter dismissing the complaint, citing the length of time that had passed and the difficulty in finding witnesses. Banse said in her letter, however, that the panel had warned Cantini to “familiarize himself fully” with the profession’s conflict of interest standards. Banse said in an interview that she removed herself from all conduct board matters involving Cantini. She said she signed the letter because “it was my job.” [Bottom of page] See Page 9: Case [End page] [Start page] [Section title] Divorce Dispute [Start paragraph] But Banse was drawn into the next misconduct complaint filed against Cantini because of her work for him in his fiercely contested divorce case unfolding in 1994 in Bennington Superior Court. On the day after she wrote the letter dismissing the conflict of interest complaint, Banse appeared in Bennington Family Court on Cantini’s behalf. The conduct board chairwoman was fighting a motion for contempt brought by Cantini’s ex-wife in an alimony dispute. Cantini testified that both his health and deteriorating legal practice made it impossible to meet his obligations. He claimed to have earned only $15,000 in the first six months of the year, according to court records. But Cantini’s legal assistant, Judi Michel, said in an interview that Cantini was paid more than $15,000 for out-of-pocket expenses alone. In an affidavit filed with the conduct board, Michel said Anderson -- then a member of the conduct board and Cantini’s office-mate – returned to the office that day and referred to Cantini as “a master of deception.” Anderson was present in court as a spectator, according to Michel. As for Cantini, when he came back from the courtroom “he told me he cried in front of Judge (Richard) Norton and Norton ‘fell for it,’ ” Michel wrote. Norton denied the motion for contempt on the grounds that Cantini could not afford to pay alimony, according to court records. [section title] Early Warnings [start paragraph] Despite Cantini’s testimony, both Anderson and lawyer Robert Hartwell, who also shared offices with Cantini, did not report him, Michel said. Then in August 1994, Michel sat down with Anderson and Hartwell and reviewed the office’s trust account ledger, Cantini’s billings and other evidence she had compiled, according to the affidavit. “I told Eric (Anderson), ‘If you don’t report Gerry … I’m going to do it,’ “Michel said in an interview. “This is after being after him since Thanksgiving of ’93 to August of ’94. He (Anderson) didn’t want to get involved.” Bookkeeper Jan Kelley recalled in an interview that she met with Anderson around November 1993 and told him about Cantini’s orders “not to record income” and “to put certain bills through the office account that were really personal.” “I thought he should do something,” Kelley said of Anderson. “I didn’t think what was being asked of me was proper conduct. And I didn’t believe as a bookkeeper I should be doing what was asked of me.” Kelley also contends that she raised questions earlier about $5,000 that appeared to be missing from a client’s trust account. Anderson acknowledged in an interview that he did not act immediately when staff members came to him in 1993 with ledger sheets showing Cantini had allegedly dipped into a trust account. Although they shared an office, Anderson has denied legal claims that he was Cantini’s partner. But the allegations against Cantini did not gain momentum until he took the witness stand on the alimony issue and allegedly misled the judge, according to Michel. Anderson cited Cantini’s courtroom testimony in the complaint he filed with the conduct board, nine months after the staff members first came to him. Anderson, in his letter to the conduct board outlining his allegations, called attention to the fact that Deborah Banse, the conduct board chair, was also Cantini’s lawyer. The complaint accuses Cantini of taking money from the trust account, charging excessive fees and then hiding his income to avoid paying alimony. “I think its important that you know that Deborah Banse is representing Gerry in connection with his ex-wife’s efforts to collect alimony,” Anderson wrote to Shelley Hill, who prosecutes cases before the conduct board. “I hope that this matter will be discussed with Deborah and that you and/or Deborah will feel free to talk to me about this matter at any time.” Michel, the former legal assistant and office manager, said Anderson only files the complaint after she threatened to. And she said the conduct board bungled its initial investigation and has dragged its feet since then. Michel said in an interview that former conduct board investigator Anne Buttimer served Cantini with a subpoena in October 1994. “She wasn’t out that door a half hour and Gerry (Cantini) is pulling out filed to take out,” Michel said. Michel said she called the conduct board in a panic, urging them to protect the documents that would incriminate Cantini. “They’re supposed to be the policing agency. I’m a secretary,” said Michel. “Why am I calling them up to secure the records?” According to bookkeeper Kelley, the subpoena was served nearly a year after she and Michel first approached Anderson with their concerns about Cantini. But Anderson said he wanted to be convinced of the allegations. “I wanted to be sure myself of what the people on the staff were saying,” Anderson said. “This is nothing I did lightly. When other lawyers are faced with having to report another lawyer, it’s not done lightly.” [End page] [Start page] [section title] Banse’s role Anderson represented Cantini in Cantin’s divorce before Banse took that job. He said last week that he told Banse of his concerns about Cantini’s conduct around the time he filed the complaint. “I said she needed to consider that she stop representing him,” Anderson said. Banse was asked in an interview why, when she was the chairwoman of the Professional Conduct Board, she did not drop Cantini as her client after he had been accused of misconduct. “I was never told the substance of any complaint,” she said. But Michel confirmed Anderson’s version of the story, saying she and Banse discussed the allegations of misconduct in full. Court documents show that Cantini replaced Banse with another attorney six months after Anderson filed the complaint with the conduct board. By the time the board formally opened the second investigation against Cantini in July, Banse had finished her term as a member, Banse, however, was chair of the conduct board in 1994 when she signed the letter dismissing the conflict of interest complaint against Cantini. Banse’s letter of June 1994 did not mention that Cantini had been her client since February of that year. In the letter dismissing the complaint, Banse said the case was old and that the board had difficulty in finding witnesses. Conduct board records show, however, that cases equally old were resolved by either a private admonition or public reprimand. Anderson did not fault Banse for writing the letter dismissing the Graf complaint while she represented Cantini. “Those kinds of letters are completely ministerial. It could have been a secretary signing it. … I’m sure Deborah Banse had nothing to do with the decision” to dismiss the complaint, he said. But professor Michael Mello, who teaches constitutional law and legal ethics at Vermont Law School, said that Banse should not have signed the letter dismissing the Cantini complaint if she was also his lawyer. “As a technical matter I think she clearly should not have signed the letter,” said Mello. “Someone else in the chain of command can come forward and do it. The biggest problem it seems to me is that it creates an appearance of impropriety.” [section title] Praise for Banse The current chairman of the Professional Conduct Board, Middlebury lawyer Robert Keiner, said in an interview that Banse was “highly respected” as chairwoman of the conduct panel. But without commenting on the specifics of the Cantini case, Keiner said a conduct board chair should probably not sign a letter dismissing a misconduct complaint against a client. “I’m not sure under the circumstances you’ve spelled out that the code necessarily mandates that. But in order to avoid exactly what we’re going through now, apparently, it might have been more prudent at the time to simply … step aside and let the vice chair deal with it or let the entire board deal with it,” Keiner said. Although emphasizing he was not commenting on any specific case, Keiner said the code of professional conduct also requires lawyers to report allegations of attorney misconduct, as long as the information was not acquired through the attorney-client relationship. No public records are kept of the board’s votes when they dismiss a complaint. The board rules say that misconduct complaints that do not lead to formal charges are secret. Wendy Collins, a lawyer who serves as counsel to the Professional Conduct Board, said she could not comment on questions about Banse because of the confidentiality issue. [section title] Other Cases Cantin’s attorney, Peter Hall, cited the conduct board’s confidentiality requirements when declining to comment last week. “I’m not aware of any public complaint against Gerald Cantini, nor have I seen anything purporting to be issued by the Professional Conduct Board in this matter,” he said. “My understanding under the rules that govern the PCB is all such complaints are in fact confidential, and should not be, and as a result won’t be, the subject of any public discussion by me on behalf of my client. Although the conduct board warned Cantini in June1994 to “familiarize himself fully” with the profession’s standards on conflict of interest, he has been sued twice over that issue since. In September 1994, the former owners of the Arlington Inn filed a [new page] Mello, the law school professor, questioned whether the proceedings should be secret. Even frivolous complaints should be public, he said. “I think the whole thing should be open. If someone files a frivolous lawsuit there are ways to deal with that. It’s unfortunate frivolous complaints might be filed against a lawyer. It’s unfortunate frivolous malpractice cases are brought against doctors. That doesn’t mean we keep them secret,” he said. Anderson said that regardless of what the conduct board’s critics think, “the board members work very hard at this job. They take it very seriously. I think they are, at least when I was on the board, fair-minded.” Anderson served on the conduct board from 1984 to 1993. He was chairman during the last four years of his tenure, presiding over the board while the Graf complaint was pending. Anderson said he could not recall being involved in any conduct board case concerning Cantini. [End page] [new page; start paragraph] lawsuit in Bennington Superior Court claiming that Cantini failed to disclose a conflict when he helped them buy the property. Robert and Sandra Ellis paid nearly $1.5 million for the inn in 1991 and then lost it through foreclosure. They argue that Cantini should have told them he was connected to the real estate firm that represented the seller of the property. In the most recent malpractice case, Ernest Salo or Winhall contends that he was duped in 1992 by Cantini and his own brother intro signing a quit-claim deed rather that a mortgage deed on his house. Cantini is alleged to have represented both brothers. The lawsuit was filed in May. Two other malpractice lawsuits against Cantini were recently settled out of court for undisclosed sums. Cantini settled with the parents of a Manchester youth who was convicted of molesting two minors. The Vermont Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 1992, ruling that Cantini provided “ineffective” counsel. Cantini also settled with Cheryl Bentsen, who sued him for allegedly mishandling her divorce. Bentsen’s attorney, Deborah Bucknam, told the court that she would prove that Cantini failed to keep track of time he billed Bentsen for. Bucknam also said she would show that Cantini failed to adequately represent Bentsen because he was embroiled in his own divorce. Bucknam told the court that there would be “extensive testimony” that Cantini took “extraordinary, including illegal, steps to avoid alimony payments” in his own divorce case. [End page] 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 Cantini Case Highlights Board Action Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Crabtree, Peter Dillon, 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 1996-09-23 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Crabtree, Peter and John Dillon. “Cantini Case Highlights Board Action.” Rutland H, September 9, 1996. Description An account of the resource Lawyer Gerald Cantini has been sued and gone to court many times because of his divorce, malpractice suits, and in multiple investigations. He has had multiple lawyers defending him during his trials but they tend to quit due to his difficult nature. 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 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 Rutland, VT Subject The topic of the resource Divorce Malpractice--United States https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/e97ad035787b82acd2cc25603544de4e.jpg e8014d43b6a004cfa43a7e129850179b https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/884fa9e95bc0de9de1bdaaa35704e9e2.jpg 3adb010b7e787a0715e8e87854412ad3 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/a0cd23992e7bd51e4ab0c89bf8e13885.jpg 49215f1b80a8991144bf9ffb7ff97864 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 Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Leahey, Jordan Text Any textual data included in the document [start title page] [Name of Newpaper] The Miami Herald [heading underneath name] The Foremost Daily Newspaper of Florida [edition and date] Keys Edition – Sunday, December 1, 1996 [end title page] [Title] ‘Crazy Joe’ case takes bizarre turn [Subtitle]Justices won’t hear cops’ teeth theory [Authors] John D. McKinnon and Lori Rozsa [start page one] At 9 a.m. Wednesday, the seven justices of the Florida Supreme Court will part a black curtain and take their seats to hear the case of Florida vs. Joseph Robert Spaziano. What they won’t hear is the state’s latest theory in the bizarre case. Call it necrodentistry. Seeing its original murder case crumble in a Seminole County courtroom, Central Florida police are trying to link Spaziano to another unsolved murder. They now say the diminutive biker could have yanked the teeth from one corpse and put them in a second victim’s jaw. That might explain why the teeth don’t match. Farfetched? Sure – but [Footnote] Please see Spaziano 28A [end page one] [start page two] [Footnote] Spaziano, from 1A that’s nothing new in this case, which began with a psychic driving around the countryside with a skull in her lap and hypnosis of the state’s star witness. For Spaziano, now age 50 after 20 years on Death Row, the post-mortem dental theory is merely the latest indication that he still faces a long uphill climb proving his innocence. A jury convicted him in 1976 of the murder of Laura Harberts, an 18-year-old hospital clerk. Over the years, Spaziano survived five black-bordered death warrants. Last January, Circuit Court Judge O.H. Eaton Jr. conducted a six-day hearing in Seminole County and concluded, “In the United States of America every person, no matter how unsavory, is entitled to due process of law and fair trial. The defendant received neither.” He ordered a new trial. The state appealed, and that’s the issue before the Florida Supreme Court on Wednesday. Orlando attorney James M. Russ will argue for the defense. Margene Roper of the State Attorney’s Office will represent the prosecution. In the past 11 months, the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office investigators have labored to find evidence to make the Harberts case stick against the scrawny, cockeyed Outlaw biker, known as “Crazy Joe.” They visited Spaziano’s ex-wife, Linda, in South Florida. “They asked me a million questions. They believe he’s involved in lots of murders. He’s no killer. He’s no rapist, He is just an a------,” she said. “I have the feeling they’re looking hither and yon for some-thing to try him on,” said Gregg Thomas. He and Steve Hanlon, pro bono attorneys from the lar firm of Holland & Knight, also represent Spaziano. “It’s a vendetta,” charged Michael Mello, Spaziano’s on-again, off-again appellate attorney between 1983 and 1995. [heading] State denies ‘vendetta’ Florida officials deny it. Says Dexter Douglass, Gov. Lawton Chiles’ general counsel: “I’d venture to say that the state’s lawyers are more interested in reaching a just verdict than they are in vendettas.” But two factors intensify the emotional impact in the law enforcement community. One is Spaziano’s proud membership in the Outlaws, a notoriously brutal motorcycle gang. The other is Mello, Spaziano’s former lawyer. A law professor and former Florida Death Row defender, Mello is a harsh and persistent critic of capital punishment. Already, the Spaziano case has made Mello into something of a celebrity in highbrow legal circles. Last weekend, for example, he presented a paper on Spaziano’s case to the American Society of Criminologists’ annual meeting in Chicago. Police and prosecutors would hate to lose this one. To do so would put a serial killer that much closer to freedom, they say. [heading] Started with a corpse It began Aug. 23, 1973, when a man spotted a skeleton at a dump near Altamonte Springs. A dentist identified it as Harberts, who had disappeared a couple weeks earlier. The case went unsolved for months. Then amid a spate of publicity about crimes by local Outlaws, police got a call from a young woman who claimed that Spaziaono had raped her. That led police to her stepson, Tony DiLisio, a 16-year-old doper. Spaziano used to hang around his father’s boat marina. Tony offered little that the police could use. But the teenager seemed eager to help nail Spaziano. Finally, after police hypnotized him twice and took him to the dump, DiLisio suddenly remembered the biker showing him Harberts’ body. A jury in Sanford believed him in 1976, convicted and recommended life in prison. Judge Robert McGregor overruled and sentenced Spaziano to death. [heading] Witness recants On June 9, 1995, DiLisio recanted – 16 days before Spaziano’s scheduled execution. DiLisio said he had been a scared, troubled teen back then. He was only trying to get in good with police and his abusive father, who bore a grudge against Spaziano for having an affair with his wife. DiLisio might have had another reason for concocting a tale. He, too, was having an affair with his father’s bride-to-be, Keppie and secretly ached over the revelation that Spaziano was his rival, he says. After Eaton ordered a new trial, the Florida Attorney General appealed. And now the state Supreme Court must decide. [heading] ‘Decision will be final’ For the state, “the Supreme Court’s decision will be final for all practical purposes,” said Assistant Attorney General Richard Martell. Despite Eaton’s opinion, Spaziano’s lawyers wonder if some-how they will lose again, as they have so often in the past. Lately they’ve had one more thing to worry about. Orange County Circuit Court Judge Dorothy Russell recently read the testimony that Eaton heard. She came to exactly the opposite conclusion – that DiLisio also was a key witness in that case and now says he lied then, too. If the state wins before the high court, Spaziano could be back on Death Row. Chiles hasn’t changed his mind about Spaziano’s guilt, says Douglass, the governor’s top legal adviser. He’ll leave it to the courts. If Spaziano wins, the state must retry him within 90 days. The evidence is thin. The original trial prosecutor, Claude Van Hook, said that without DiLisio, there was “no case.” Other evidence: The victim’s roommate and boyfriend identified Spaziano – 2 ½ years after she disappeared – as a “traveling cook” who came to the apartment looking for Harberts. In a new trail, DiLisio’s original testimony could be presented – with a little legal maneuvering – although it would be subject to a strong attack by the defense. “It certainly is going to be a monumental undertaking to try to put something together,” Seminole County prosecutor Tom Hastings said. [heading] Linked to other murders? If the state can’t convict Spaziano for the Harberts murder, police want to connect him to other crimes. [image caption] Sentenced to death 20 years ago: Joseph Spaziano. [end page two] [start page three] Among the possibilities: [bullet point] The murders on New Year’s Eve 1974 of an Outlaw motorcyclist and his girlfriend in Chicago. Although police there cleared the case with another suspect years ago, a woman who lived with Spaziano and an Outlaw informant implicated Spaziano in 1995. [bullet point] Two unrelated murders of women in Orlando. “The information we received from the streets would indicate Spaziano was responsible for their deaths,” said Sgt. Dan Nazarchuk of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. The problem, he says, is that valuable witnesses are scared to testify. [bullet point] A second skeleton found at the dump in 1973 along with Harberts, never identified. [heading] A second skeleton Earlier this year, Seminole County deputies Ray Parker and Ralph Salerno reinterviewed witnesses from the original Harberts investigation. They took a statement from a woman who knew Spaziano then. She said that in the spring of 1973, she saw Spaziano at Daytona Beach with a “a young girl” riding on the back of his motorcycle. The girl asked her to hold her purse “for safekeeping,” according to the Seminole County sheriff’s office. The girl didn’t pick up her purse after the motorcycle ride. Five days later, she said, Spaziano showed up at her door “and demanded the purse.” She turned it over but not before peeking inside for the identification. She told Salerno and Parker that she remembered only that the girl was from Ann Arbor, Mich. Two months ago, Seminole police asked forensic anthropologist Dr. William Maples to examine the unidentified remains. They had been examined before. In 1973, Lawrence Angel of the Smithsonian Institution’s Department of Anthropology concluded that the body was that of a white female 16 to 21, about five feet five inches, slender build. She had crooked lower teeth and two fillings in her upper teeth. According to a 1996, press release from the Seminole sheriff’s office, Maples concluded that the girl was 15 to 16 years old, five feet seven inches, 110 pounds and had crooked teeth. [heading] Help in ID Based on Maples’ description, a police artist drew a sketch of what the girl might have looked like. Seminole police asked Ann Arbor police and TV stations for help in identification. Deputies in Washtenaw County, where Ann Arbor is, came up with a missing persons case from 1970, three years before the Daytona Beach motorcycle ride. In April 1970, Cynthia Coon, 14, disappeared on her way to school. She was five feet four inches and weighed 110. She “looked a little bit” like the police artist sketch, Seminole sheriff’s spokesman Ed McDonough said. Dental records could establish and identification – the skull of the skeleton had crooked teeth and fillings, easy to match. But they didn’t match. Cynthia Coon had never been to a dentist in her life. Her father, Dr. William Coon, a pathologist, said “she had straight teeth,” no fillings. How to reconcile that? [heading] ‘Someone else’s teeth’ McDonough said Spaziano “had the habit of removing teeth from his victims.” Those found in the skeleton “probably weren’t her teeth. They could very well be someone else’s teeth.” Maples said that if anyone had tried to adhere teeth from one body into the jaw of this body, it would have showed. “If the corpse had fillings in places where there should not be fillings, there is a problem.” Maples said. Seminole police want the Coon family to give a blood sample for DNA testing. The family has not consented. McDonough still sees Spaziano as a suspect. “He was the type that removed teeth and put them back in other victims,” McDonough said. “He was very sick that way.” [image caption] Will argue for defense: Attorney James M. Russ. [end page three] 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 'Crazy Joe' Case Takes Bizarre Turn Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McKinnon, John D. Rozsa, Lori Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived McKinnon, John D. and Lori Rozsa. “‘Crazy Joe’ Case Takes Bizarre Turn: Justice Won’t Hear Cops’ Teeth Story.” The Miami Herald (Miami, Florida), December 1, 1996, p. 1. 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 1996-12-01 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 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 Miami, FL https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/157bae4befc15b4e68a1c893aa2cf6e4.jpg 98fe43910567e74bf6b4fafad9b3194f https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/6ff940c444cbe44dcf3bae8e8e5be6c0.jpg db2ec8dc5782b53618f6e270334bef70 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] [Title] Against the Death Penalty—The Relentless Dissents of Justices Brennan and Marshall by Michael Mellow. [Subtitle] Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1996, 331 pp., hardcover--$ [Article Begins] By any measure, the author of this new book, Michael Mello, is the leading law scholar-teacher-litigator in death penalty law and has been for several years. For the many others of us trying to make our marks in this field, Professor/Attorney Mello is both a hero and daunting presence. His most recent book-length effort, Against the Death Penalty, certainly reaffirms his leadership in this field and adds to death penalty scholarly literature a tour de force treatment of the roles of Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall in the current era of death penalty jurisprudence. The result of this first-rate legal scholar having zeroed in on this important aspect of two of the most important Supreme Court Justices of this century is a truly extraordinary volume. Justice Brennan served on the Court from 1956 to 1990, and Justice Marshall served from 1967 to 1991. As a result, they were there together for the stream of major death penalty opinions from 1972 through 1990. In all but one case, they voted identically; in all but two cases, they even took the same perspective on the key legal issues of the case. As the book title reveals, their opinions relentlessly argued against the death penalty, sometimes in the majority but most often in dissent. Death penalty opponents will find in these opinions (and in Mello’s commentary on them) ample support and encouragement for their positions. Death penalty supporters, while presumably rejecting the bottom lines of the opinions, nonetheless will find them fascinating to read. For those uninterested in the death penalty but students of the Court and the use of dissenting opinions, Mello’s exploration of the history, jurisprudence, and judicial politics of the sustained dissent will be equally valuable in that regard. The book is nothing if not thorough. In keeping with the traditions of legal scholarship, Mello documents his 210 pages of text with nearly 1,500 textual footnotes. While I tend to join those advocating for abolition of the footnoting style of traditional legal scholarship, in particular law review articles with longer textual footnotes than primary text, the delightful thoroughness of Mello’s work reminds me of the value of such detailed footnoting. In fairly striking contrast, the reader searches in vain for other than the most summary of the table of contents. Given the richness of the volume, a detailed guide to its contents somewhere up front would have been a valuable addition. As it is, the pages of text are divided into four chapters with the simplest of titles. Not that there aren’t subsections in the chapters; they just never made it into the sort of detailed table of contents so helpful to readers. Mello’s first chapter, “The Two Justices,” gives the reader 83 pages and 554 footnotes of background information on these two Supreme Court giants. This chapter not only documents thoroughly the background and experience of the Justices, but it also provides delightful up-close-and-personal snapshots of such episodes as Brennan’s prodigious notetaking in law school and Marshall’s coy response to notification of his nomination to the Court. This chapter tells us about the human beings inside the robes, while the rest of the book focuses upon their roles as Supreme Court Justices. [End first page] [Start second page] The second chapter, labeled with similar frustrating economy of words (“Legitimacy in History”), provides the reader with a quite interesting treatment of dissenting opinions in Supreme Court history and with forays into the products of such great dissenters as John Marshall Harlan, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis, and William O. Douglas. While this chapter largely leaves the focal point of the death penalty, it is excellent. I often have heard law students say they don’t pay much attention to the dissenting opinions because, after all, they are just the sour grapes of the losers in the decision-making process. Mello’s chapter on the legitimacy of dissenting opinions throughout Supreme Court history should be made required reading for such students. In chapter three, “Legitimacy in Theory,” Mello takes the concept of the dissenting opinion through a tour of a variety of viewpoints on law and legal development, ranging from natural law to sociological jurisprudence to critical legal studies. After comparing and contrasting the perspective upon dissenting opinions in each of these jurisprudential camps, Mello returns to struggle to put meaning into the Eighth Amendment and to “answer definitively the question of what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.” (155) Mello’s conclusion: “Some will find the answer in social or moral certainties; others will find those truths to be subjective. No one can have the ‘last word.’” (155) The final chapter, “Legitimacy in Judicial Politics,” takes the reader inside the day-to-day workings (and personal politics) of the Court. Noting that all death penalty cases are put on the “discuss” list by the Justices, it is clear nonetheless that Brennan and Marshall argued more strenuously for some cases than for others. This chapter includes excerpts from memo’s to Justice Marshall from his clerks, from other interviews of Supreme Court clerks, and from the intense behind-the-scenes maneuvering that occurred in several key death penalty cases. Yes, this extraordinary book is about death penalty jurisprudence at the Supreme Court level, but it is so much more. In addition to the detailed and copiously documented discussion of the death penalty opinions by Justices Brennan and Marshall, the volume contributes a major treatment of the fundamental notion of dissenting opinions in the American legal system and in jurisprudential thought. Serious death penalty scholars will find the book to be essential, but any student of the Supreme Court in general or of dissenting opinions in particular must also give this volume a prominent place in their library. The book is superb, and once again we are indebted to an extraordinary scholar, Michael Mello. Victor L. Streib Dean and Professor of Law Pettit College of Law Ohio Northern University Ada, Ohio 45810 [in handwriting] 419/772-2000 [End second page] Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Book Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Dhue, Helen 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 Against The Death Penalty--The Relentless Dissents of Justices Brennan and Marshall Subject The topic of the resource Book review Capital Punishment Description An account of the resource Dean and Professor of Law, Victor L. Streib's positive review of Michael Mello's book "Against the Death Penalty--The Relentless Dissents of Justices Brennan and Marshall." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Streib, Victor Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 JPGs 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2000 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Washington D.C. https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/419ea3700efda77917359ad5cecdd88c.jpg f82c30582539aac8b42be663cbd6830c 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] The Lawyer’s Bookshelf [subheading] Reviewed by Ursula Bentele [handwritten text] New York Law Journal (8/9/96) [title] Against the Death Penalty: The Relentless Dissents of Justices Brennan and Marshall [author] By Michael Mello. [publishing information] Northeastern University Press, Boston, Mass. 331 pages. $45. [article start] Against the Death Penalty by Michael Mellow addresses a fascinating topic in its most compelling context. The question of what is the appropriate reaction of a judge to what he or she perceives to be an unjust law has plagued philosophers and jurists for centuries. When that law can result, as it now can even in New York, in putting a human being to death, the issue takes on additional urgency and drama. [end paragraph] [start paragraph] In a recent program at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York discussing this topic, speakers disagreed sharply about the “right” response of a judge, opposed to capital punishment, who is faced with the prospect of participating in a criminal justice system that carries out executions. On the trial level, might the judge be duty-bound to volunteer for capital cases, so as to ensure that the defendant will secure the most favorable possible rulings and instructions, or should the judge request that such cases not be assigned to her? Should the judge on an appellate court use all his persuasive powers to reduce the number of death sentences affirmed, while dissenting in all cases in which the majority disagrees, or, at some point, must the judge resign as a matter of conscience? [end paragraph] [start paragraph] Justice Robert Utter, a highly respected member of the Washington Supreme Court who had dissented in every case in which a death sentence was affirmed, finally resigned last year, announcing that “I can no longer participate in a legal system that intentionally takes human life in capital punishment cases.” He said his decision was prompted in part by similarities he observed in his own moral struggles with those reported in Ingo Muller’s Hitler’s Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich. [end paragraph] [start paragraph] Whether this analogy, or similar ones referring to the judges who upheld the apartheid laws in South Africa, is entirely appropriate to the situation of anti-death penalty judges operating within the American system of justice may be debated. Nonetheless, a book with the title Michael Mello gave to his book would, I had hoped, discuss in some considerable depth and from a wide perspective the different responses to cases in which current law and personal morality conflict. While the book does not touch on some of these issues, to my disappointment it does so only briefly and in a limited fashion. [end paragraph] [start paragraph] Like Michael Mello, I have represented scores of death row inmates. As counsel for those facing execution, I always appreciated the presence of Justices William J. Brennan and Thurgood Marshall on the U.S. Supreme Court in these cases, not simply for their inevitable votes against death, but for their eloquent voices in dissent. Yet at times a sense of disquiet tugged at my subconsciousness. Would I be so sure that they were acting appropriately if I happened to disagree with their position? [end paragraph] [start paragraph] Indeed, when Justice Antonin Scalia announced his intention no longer to follow the precedents, set by the Court in Woodson v. North Carolina and Lockett v. Ohio, requiring individualized consideration of all defendants charged with capital crimes, didn’t I think (as I would imagine Mr. Mello thought) that Justice Scalia acted improperly? After all, “relentless dissents” on both sides amount to stubborn refusal to abide by the well-established precedents of the highest court in the land. (Justice Scalia might even have the better of the positions, as he claimed that it was logically impossible for him to follow the Woodson-Lockett line of cases while at the same time remaining true to the Court’s insistence in other cases that the death penalty must be applied in a consistent, evenhanded fashion.) [end paragraph] [start paragraph] Mr. Mello’s book does present considerable background information relevant to the two Justices’ persistent voices against the death penalty. He begins with biographies of the two men, emphasizing particularly Justice Marshall’s long and passionate efforts on behalf of black Americans. He then chronicles the evolving practices of the Supreme Court in rendering its opinions, from Justice John Marshall’s focus on achieving unanimity whenever possible so as to enhance the Court’s credibility as an institution, through the “companions in dissent,” Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis D. Brandeis, to the modern era in which individual voices predominate over concern for the Court as an entity. [end paragraph] [start paragraph] Mello describes some of the most famous dissents in the Court’s history: Justice Benjamin Curtis dissenting from Dred Scott v. Sandford, the first Justice John Marshall Harlan delivering the lone dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson and dissenting along with Holmes and Brandeis from the Court’s decision in Lochner v. New York, the Holmes and Brandeis dissents from the Court’s incursions on the First Amendment, and similar dissents by Justices Hugo L. Black and William O. Douglas. From these examples, where once dissenting opinions ultimately persuaded the Court that its initial decision was wrong, Mello draws the conclusion that dissents have indeed been justified by history. [end paragraph] [start paragraph] Mello then surveys how various jurisprudential theories would deal with sustained dissents. Mello acknowledges that this discussion is only preliminary and limited in scope, but it does provide a basic framework for looking at the issue. At the extremes, the legal positivists would disapprove of such dissents as examples of failure to abide by the rule of law, while modern adherents to natural law would see Brennan and Marshall as abiding by a higher law, a position particularly justified when it serves to guarantee individual rights. The book does not explore what theoretical foundation actually might have influenced the Justices in their death penalty dissents beyond noting Justice Brennan’s partiality to modern natural law theory. Readers may find interesting Mello’s perception about how individual thinkers, including Herbert Wechsler, John Hart Ely and Jesse Choper, would assess these relentless dissents. [end paragraph] [start paragraph] The final chapter in the book is titled “Legitimacy in Judicial Politics.” Here Mello, with the assistance of the recently released papers of Justice Marshall, provides several instances of opinions starting as dissents that either persuaded a majority or, in the form of dissents from denial of certiorari, signaled to counsel issues that might in the future command the four votes necessary to obtain review. This section fives the reader an interesting flimpse into the workings of Marshall’s chambers, as well as demonstrating that, at least in some cases, these dissenting views not only spared some lives but affected the course of capital pubishment jurisprudence. [end paragraph] [start paragraph] Given the book’s important contribution, I consider it unfortunate that it includes gratuitous ad hominem attacks on Supreme Court Justices that are neither fully developed nor adequately supported. True, one would not expect a book dealing with the dissents of Brennan and Marshall to contain extensive critical assessments of the other members of the Court. It would therefore only have been improved, at least in this reviewer’s eyes, had it omitted such throwaway lines as “a cynical hack like Lewis Powell,” as well as a personalized diatribe against Clarence Thomas, “whose dismal performance as a Justice so far has already more than fulfilled by lowest and basest expectations . . . [who] does his speaking through groups of people plucked from the Rolodex of his best friend and through the brutal character of his judicial opinions . . ..” [end paragraph] [start paragraph] Perhaps my assessment of this book was unduly colored by my own high expectations. The question of what honorable men and women should do when faced with laws that they regard as supremely unjust is timely and of the utmost importance. Mr. Mello has performed a valuable service in gathering a lot of material relevant to this critical and difficult issue. In light of his outstanding advocacy on behalf of capital defendants, he was well qualified to analyze why the particular relentless dissents of Justices Brennan and Marshall – dissents that essentially said “not in our names” when the state was determined to put one of its citizens to death – were different from other sustained dissents. By shortchanging this issue, Mr. Mello missed a valuable opportunity, at a time when no member of the Supreme Court adheres to this position, to provide thoughtful support for judges categorically opposed to the use of capital punishment in our country. [article end] [reviewer information] Ursula Bentele is a professor at Brooklyn Law School. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Book Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Berrier, Carson 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 Against the Death Penalty: The Relentless Dissents of Justices Brennan and Marshall Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mello, Michael 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 1996-08-09 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 Legal reform Capital punishment Supreme Court Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 JPG 300 DPI Description An account of the resource Review of Mello's piece discusses what the appropriate reaction of a judge should be to a law they believe to be unjust (specifically concerning capital punishment). Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bentele, Ursula. Review of "Against the Death Penalty: The Relentless Dissents of Justices Brennan and Marshall," by Michael Mello. New York Law Journal (August 1996). Language A language of the resource English https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/99ff48b52b0718c2ffc55cc2d595bbae.jpg d83ae450271b7918294befd23a7d85af https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/5f08db3e6bab0ba288f5243d4a3b2a9c.jpg 2baee2b0d83068e7d877c31d0b1c7e32 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/c7d19c1fd9bafe6ba1596f396b4ddfb4.jpg 3aad7d84dd3fc215a4216f7fc3118ca7 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] Death Penalty Not one, but two irreconcilable differences of opinion concern the death penalty in America. The first is the question of whether the death penalty is morally permissible. In the twentieth century more delicate consciences have arisen which judge the death penalty immoral, despite the universal practice of mankind in prior centuries, and general agreement among older moralists. Still many thinkers find the death penalty morally acceptable for heinous crimes by dangerous thugs; and the American people are overwhelmingly in favor of capital punishment. I may remark parenthetically that, apart from the intellectual classes, such opposition to the existing death penalty seems to be motivated by the ugliness of all present methods of execution. It would be interesting to note the effect on public opinion if any state should begin to execute by use of an oxygen-free nitrogen chamber. Since nitrogen is a major component of air the victim notices no unpleasing odor, and, since the victim continues to exhale normally, the carbon dioxide does not build up in the blood so that no need for breath is felt prior to loss of consciousness. Such an approach would seem to mitigate some of the negative reaction to execution methods expressed in the propaganda of death penalty opponents. The second difference of opinion, although puzzling to some, concerns how the Constitution can be interpreted to absolutely forbid the death penalty when it specifically refers to “capital cases” and the “jeopardy of life or limb.” It would seem to some that theoreticians capable of such a jump could also find ways to justify quartering soldiers in private homes. Among the absolute opponents of the death penalty on both moral and constitutional grounds were two former supreme court justices, Brennan and Marshall. In the face of solid court majorities supporting the constitutionality of capital punishment, these two persisted for years dissenting in every capital case that reached the court, even filing dissents to the denial of certiorari. [End of page] As did the subjects of this book, also the author, Professor Mello (who has been counsel in more than fifty death penalty cases) wholeheartedly opposes the death penalty on both moral and Constitutional grounds. He makes no attempt at an extensive explication of the opposing arguments to either of these questions. Nor does he attempt to provide a detailed history of death penalty cases since Furman v. Georgia. His book is a salute to justices Brennan and Marshall; and with them it rejects the case law for an absolutist approach. To the extent that the author confronts public support for executions he suggests, like Justice Marshall, that the moral position would triumph if the public were better informed. He also repeatedly brings up the popular assumption that the death penalty is applied in a racially discriminatory manner. This popular belief cannot be maintained when variables other than race are added to simplistic studies. (See “Execution by Quote?” in THE PUBLIC INTEREST, no. 116, Summer 1994 p.3). There is no hint given that this conclusion may be questionable. Professor Mello’s interesting and varies study discusses the lives of justices Brennan and Marshall, the origins and history of dissenting opinions in the United States Supreme Court, the justification of the persistent unavailing dissents under varied theories of jurisprudence and finally the treatment of death penalty cases in the Supreme Court and the dissenters themselves. In each of these segments, except perhaps the last, the author demonstrates an admirable gift for concise and clear summarization. For a reader who has not read a full length biography of either, the brief and excellent biographical essays on justices Brennan and Marshall provide interesting anecdotes about their appointments. It is well-known that Eisenhower described Brennan as his worst mistake. Mello [End of column] explains how that mistake occurred when both the President and his Attorney General, Brownell, assumed that Brennan was ideologically in tune with Arthur Vanderbilt, Chief Justice of New Jersey. In fact, while Brennan and Vanderbilt shared an interest in court reform, on political questions they were far apart. Marshall’s appointment to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is even more interesting since it involved a deal whereby Mississippi’s Senator Eastland agreed to advance Kennedy’s appointment of Marshall in return for an appointment to the Fifth Circuit of Herold Cox, and outspoken racist and a great embarrassment to the federal judiciary. Following the biographies, Mello provides an account of the practice instituted by John Marshall of promulgating an opinion of the Court, rather than having the Justices give their opinions seriatim. The official opinion created the need for dissents. Brief, useful histories of the most prominent dissenters stop with Harlan on the Warren Court. Mello’s brief biographical essays and histories serve as background study in his summary of jurisprudential theories, before he settles down to a rather dry analysis of the actual dissents by Brennan and Marshall. This section makes the interesting point that the seemingly pointless dissents to denial of certiorari were often effective messages to the lawyers below as to what points might be raised successfully in the future. The author’s political position is always in evidence, and leads to some overstatement. Marshall is said to have resigned from a court whose “decisions invariably would increase the misery of Blacks, the poor, and the uneducated.” Lewis Powell is off-handedly described as a [End of page] “cynical hack”; and Clarence Thomas is attacked at greater length for no reason germane to the book. In law professor fashion the text (210 pages) is supported by voluminous footnotes (110) pages. There is a combined index and table of cases. The book is suitable for all academic collections acquiring a broad range of materials on legal history, the Supreme Court or the death penalty. It is not intended to be useful in practice. [End of article] 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. Underwood, Drew Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Death Penalty Description An account of the resource A review of Michael Mello's book: Against the Death Penalty. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Lynch, Michael J. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 3 JPGs 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Michael Mello Supreme Court