1 20 70 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/2ec0d8d66ae9c84dd0e5b8f4baaf6009.jpg 6881f289078ddc30345de42ed45cb6df https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/96c3c5d8eafa567f2d08e6aa65d1f7c1.jpg 4f12b7d0179c7df0e2a0b378bd7f82f2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [First Page]<br />[heading]<br />'Crazy Joe' is granted a reprieve <br />Death Row inmate to get new hearing <br /><br />By Lori Rozsa Herald Staff Writer <br /><br />[Start of the first column]<br /><br />The Florida Supreme Court issued an indefinite stay for condemned biker "Crazy Joe" Spaziano Tuesday --- nine days before his scheduled execution. Spaziano, who turned 50 on Tuesday, was visiting with his mother and sister on Death row when the news came in. He had already shaved his head in preparation for his death date with the electric chair a week from Thursday. <br /><br />"His overriding emotion was relief," said his attorney, Mike Mello, a volatile Vermont law professor. "But I think it's more the absence of terror and fear than the presence of anything like joy."<br /><br />The Supreme Court justices set a Nov. 15 deadline for a hearing on new evidence in the 20-year-old murder case. <br /><br />Tony DiLisio, the state's star witness in the 1976 murder trial, recanted his testimony this summer, saying he lied when he testified Crazy Joe showed him the body of Laura Lynn Harberts at an Altamonte Springs dump in 1973. Harberts was a a hospital records clerk. DiLisio, then 16, was the only witness to link Spaziano to the crime.<br /><br />The justices also kicked Mello off the case, citing his "flagrant disregard of this Court's procedures and directions." <br /><br />The court ordered the state office that represents indigent Death Row inmates, called Capital Collateral Representative, to represent Spaziano --- adding that volunteer help from a pri-<br />[end of the first column]<br /><br />[Start of the second column]<br />[Image with caption] DEATH ROW: Joseph Spaziano was to be executed Sept 21. [End Image Caption] <br /><br />vate law firm would also be welcome. <br /><br />A dispute between Mello and the CCR, as it's known, is at the heart of Tuesday's stay of execution. <br /><br />The decision comes four days after the justices refused to issue a stay, and ordered the evidentiary hearing to take place Friday. Last week the court ordered Mello to work with the CCR, which has represented Spaziano in the past. <br /><br />But Mello refused. After a flurry of motions where both criticized each other, the justices said it was obvious Spaziano [End page one] <br /><br />[Beginning of page two] <br /><br />[Heading] <br />'Crazy Joe' Spaziano wins indefinite stay of execution <br /><br />Top state court agrees to hear new evidence <br /><br /><strong>Spaziano, </strong>from <strong>1A</strong><br /><br /><br />[start of the third column]<br />needed more than a few days to sort out who is representing him. <br /><br />"We envisioned a spirit of cooperation between CCR and Mello that would guarantee the best representation for Spaziano," the justices said in Tuesday's opinion. <br /><br />"Unfortunately, the events of this past weekend make it clear that such cooperation does not exist." <br /><br /><strong>Catching up</strong> <br />Marty McClain chief assistant at CCR, said his office has a lot of work to do on the case. They represented Spaziano until June. He said their first priority is to get a copy of a secret report on DiLisio that was prepared by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement at the request of Gov. Lawton Chiles. <br /><br />CCR investigators were questioned by the FDLE, and they told the agency about their unsuccessful attempts to get a statement from DiLisio. It is because of that cooperation with the FDLE that Mello said the CCR should not be permitted to represent Spaziano. <br /><br />Chiles stayed Spaziano's last execution date after DiLisio told The Herald that what he said in the murder trial and in a rape trial wasn't true. <br /><br />But after reading the FDLE report, Chiles issued another <br />[end of the third column]<br /><br />[start of the fourth column]<br /><br />[Above image by Associated Press. Caption] KICKED OFF CASE: Mike Mello, a Vermont law professor.<br /><br />death warrant, saying he was convinced DiLisio is lying now, and was telling the truth at the trials. Chiles has refused to release that report, citing the need to protect witnesses who were guaranteed anonymity by the FDLE. <br /><br />"Obviously, this report contains statements of witnesses with material information," McClain said. "We need to know what that is. If the the information indicates Mr. Spaziano is innocent, we're entitled to that. If it's adverse to Mr. Spaziano, we need to know if that person is to be believed."<br /><br /><strong>Chiles blasts lawyer</strong><br />Just as the Supreme Court was issuing its decision Tuesdays afternoon, Chiles was holding a <br />[end of the fourth column]<br /><br />[start of the fifth column]<br /><br />[Quote text box above from Mello] 'His overriding emotion was relief. But I think it's more the absence of terror and fear than the presence of anything like joy.' Mike Mello, Joseph Spaziano's attorney. [end quote box].<br /><br />press conference across the street. He strongly criticized Mello. <br /><br />"I don't think he's serving his client," Chiles said. "I don;t think he's serving justice in general with what he's doing." <br /><br />But Mello said he accomplished what he set out to do---earn a stay and more time to investigate the new twists in the case. And he said he will not leave the case, though he acknowledges he needs help. <br /><br />"My top priority right now is to get a major Florida law firm willing to sign on as a pro bono counsel," Mello said. "We need to get that secret FDLE report. And we need to track down every piece of paper in all of the cases they've tried to pin on Joe." <br /><br />Ron Sachs, spokesman for Chiles, said the Supreme Court's stay doesn't change the governor's mind about Spaziano's guilt.<br /><br />"He remains convinced, waveringly so, about this case," Sachs said. <br /><br />Herald Staff Writer Mark Silva Contributed to this report.<br />[end of article] Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Hampton, Samantha Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Crazy Joe' is granted a reprieve Subject The topic of the resource Spaziano, Joe Death row--United States Chiles, Lawton, 1930-1998 Description An account of the resource Joe Spaziano is granted a new hearing on his murder trial. Nine days before his execution date, the Florida Supreme Court has decided to hold Spaziano indefinitely to allow new evidence to be shown. Mello is kicked off the Spaziano case due Mello having issues following the court procedures and directions. The only witness to the murder trial, Tony DiLisio, has retracted his testimony linking Spaziano to the murder. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rozsa, Lori Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Rozsa, Lori. The Miami Herald Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-09-13 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 JPGs 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Miami, FL Lawton Chiles https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/d6d165983bbdabe83da711ec4422a13a.jpg 266334acd6cf6cbb34027a1a96fe4e62 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 article Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Hildebrand, Paige Text Any textual data included in the document [heading]<br />'Crazy Joe' lawyers to square off today<br />By Mark Silva<br />Capital Bureau Chief<br /><br />[start of the first column]<br />TALLAHASSEE - Florida's Supreme Court today will examine the case of "Crazy Joe" Spaziano, who faces the electric chair in two weeks, although it is unclear what the court is looking for in unexpected oral arguments.<br /><br />"It's not real clear to me, to tell you the truth," said Michael Mello, Spaziano's lawyer, who has filed several 11th-hour pleadings. "I really have only one argument in this case, which is they got the wrong guy."<br /><br />After nearly 20 years on Death Row, Spaziano is slated for execution Sept. 21 for the murder Laura Lynn Harberts, an 18-year-old hospital clerk whose skeletal remains were found in August 1973 with the remains of another, still unidentified 19-year-old woman among garbage strewn in woods near Orlando.<br /><br />The case rested on one witness.<br /><br />Recently, that witness, Tony DiLisio, claimed he lied at the 1976 trial when he said Spaziano had shown him the bodies. DiLisio now says his testimony was coerced.<br /><br /><strong>New death warrant</strong><br /><br />Gov. Lawton Chiles postponed Spaziano's execution, giving the Florida Department of Law Enforcement time to investigate DiLisio's story. But after the FDLE reported that DiLisio had implicated Spaziano numerous times in conversations with friends, and that Spaziano had implicated himself in a jail house talk with another convict, Chiles signed a new death warrant.<br /><br />The investigation remains secret. Citing the confidentiality of clemency cases, the governor has refused to make public that FDLE report or the names of the people interviewed.<br /><br />The Supreme Court has <br />[end of the first column]<br /><br />[start of the second column]<br />reviewed Spaziano's case before. This is his fifth death warrant signed by three governors; Gov. Bob Graham signed one in 1985, Gov. Bob Martinez in 1989 and 1990, Chiles in May and August.<br /><br />In scheduling a hearing today at 2 p.m., the court has advised lawyers only that it wants to hear arguments on "all pending matters."<br /><br />Spaziano's lawyer has filed several motions. These include request to delay the execution, request for a new trial and a plea to reopen the appeal of Spaziano's sentence that was heard years ago. They include request to see the FDLE's report, and to provide money for Spaziano's defense - which Mello, a Vermont law school professor, has been handling from afar.<br /><br /><strong>Prepared to argue</strong><br /><br />Mello will arrive at the court today prepared to argue for all of this.<br /><br />"I would have liked to have known whether there was anything in particular they were looking for," Mellow said Wednesday from his home in Vermont. "This is their meeting. I didn't ask for a hearing."<br /><br />The attorney general's office, arguing for Spaziano's execution, hasn't been given any more advance warning of the court's interests today.<br /><br />"There is just so much in all those motions, I think the court wants to have an opportunity to let them be heard," said Carolyn Snurkowski, the assistant attorney general appearing in court today.<br /><br />Supreme Court Clerk Did White suggest the ball actually is in Mello's court.<br /><br />"I think they will probably wait on Mike and see what he puts his attention on," White said. <br /><br />[end article] Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Crazy Joe' lawyers to square off today Subject The topic of the resource Lawyers Mello, Michael Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Silva, Mark 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 September 7, 1995 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 Florida Description An account of the resource Michael Mello prepares to argue for Spaziano's innocence in Florida's Supreme Court two weeks before Spaziano's death sentence is carried through. https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/754e1032183901295e62c24e710e1bdc.jpg 578e8a126791520f0fe92df4ac655fe7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [title] ‘Mello’s responsible for Spaziano’s life’ [subtitle] Roger Parloff is a senior writer at The American Lawyer. This article is reprinted, with permission, from the April 1996 issue. “If this court intends to kill this innocent man by depriving him of the effective assistance of counsel,” pro bono counsel Michael Mello wrote the Florida Supreme Court last Sept. 8, “then it will do so without my complicity. I will not participate in a sham evidentiary hearing.” To stop the machinery of death from claiming his client, Mello threw himself in the gears. By refusing to show up to a hearing for which he had been given a week to prepare and highlighting that, in his opinion, his client was being denied effective assistance of counsel, he shamed the court into granting a stay of execution and time to prepare properly. For years the eccentric Mello, now a professor at Vermont Law School, had written in pleadings, law review articles, and newspaper editorials that his Death Row client, Joseph “Crazy Joe” Spaziano, was innocent. Mello’s writings were always passionate, always verbose, occasionally offensive, and never successful. Spaziano, a member of an Orlando motorcycle gang, was convicted in January 1976 of brutally murdering Laura Harberts, an 18-year-old hospital clerk, who disappeared on Aug. 5, 1973, and whose skeletal remains were discovered in a garbage dump 16 days later. While the case raised numerous perplexing legal issues, the most disturbing was that -- unbeknownst to the jury -- the testimony of the key prosecution witness, a troubled teen drug addict named Anthony DiLisio, consisted almost entirely of hypnotically recovered memories. Although the state Supreme Court later decided that hypnotically induced testimony was so unreliable as to be inadmissible per se, both that court and the federal courts refused to upset Spaziano’s conviction, since his trial lawyer had never objected to DeLisio’s testimony on those grounds. Indeed, his trial lawyer chose not to let the jury know that DeLisio’s testimony was hypnotically induced, fearing that the jury might give it undue credence if it knew. While Spaziano’s fourth execution warrant was pending in June 1995, DeLisio, now a born-again Christian, recanted his testimony, Gov. Lawton Chiles briefly stayed Spaziano’s execution to investigate the recantation, but in late August he issued a fifth warrant, claiming that a report by state investigators -- which Chiles refused to make public -- established the recantation was false. Spaziano was to die Sept. 21. On Sept. 8 Mello went to the Supreme Court seeking a stay of execution and an evidentiary hearing concerning the recantation. The court granted the hearing but refused to order a stay of execution. Instead, by a 4-to-3 vote, the court ordered Mello, an appellate lawyer with very little trial experience, no associates, and no investigator, to handle an evidentiary hearing one week later, on Sept. 15. The court also ordered the state’s Office of Capital Collateral Representative -- a public defender’s office devoted to capital post-conviction appeals -- to assist Mello. Mello refused to comply. “We would have thrown a hearing together,” he says, “put on enough evidence so that (the justices could say), ‘Yeah, you had your hearing,’ we would have lost, the [trial-level] judge would have made killer fact-finding against us, and . . . Joe would have been dead on time and as scheduled.” In a handwritten fax sent from his motel to the Supreme Court on the night of Sept. 8, Mello just said No. He wrote, among other things, that he and CCR could not provide competent assistance with just six days’ preparation. Mello also pledged that he would not surrender his 25 boxes of case files to CCR or to any other attorney in time for the hearing. “If you are going to kill an innocent man without a lawyer,” he wrote, “you will do so in such a way that the whole world will see what you are doing. . . . I will not be your mask.” The high court blinked. On Sept. 12 it threw Mello off the case but granted Spaziano a stay. Then, in January, after new pro bono attorneys at 470-lawyer Holland & Knight took over the case -- and the Supreme Court allowed them almost three months to prepare -- Circuit Judge O.H. Eaton Jr., of Sanford, overturned Spaziano’s conviction and granted a new trial. “Mike Mello’s responsible for Joe Spaziano’s life,” says H&K partner Gregg Thomas, who handled the hearing with his partner Stephen Hanlon and Orlando-based criminal specialist James Russ. Holland & Knight donated about $400,000 in lawyer time and $70,000 in costs to handle the hearing, Thomas estimates, not counting Russ’s time. The state has appealed Judge Eaton’s ruling to the Florida Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Spaziano is still serving life for the 1971 rape and battery of a 16-year-old girl. Mello believes Spaziano is innocent of that charge as well. But as Mello says, “that’s another story.” [Break of text] Judge Eaton overturned Spaziano’s conviction and granted a new trial. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Student Editor of the Digital Item Dickinson, Terra Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Kurtz, Logan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Mello's responsible for Spaziano's life' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Parloff, Roger Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Subject The topic of the resource Spaziano, Joe Mello, Michael Description An account of the resource Michael Mello successfully argued for Joe Spaziano to receive a fair trial by refusing to show up to a hearing for which he had been given a week to prepare and highlighting that Spaziano was being denied effective assistance of counsel, he shamed the court into granting a stay of execution and time to prepare properly. Though Mello himself was thrown off of the case, this action allowed for Spaziano to have a new trial. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-04 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 JPG 300 DPI Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Roger Parloff, The New York Times, 1996. Reprint, The American Laywer, April 1996. Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Florida https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/de98b1403237654e15c7a6f443f80ee0.jpg be7b0d99e5b4c6fbe6fb4b2cc55cece7 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/8affbde699646ecdade956cbd0367746.jpg 495525e8fca2740755ba49729ddd63c3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [title] A phony trial and a crucial issue: Justice <br /><br />[author] By Tony Proscio <br /><br />If you didn't know the players, you might have mistaken this for a romantic morality play: The tale of the Penitent Liar racing to the gallows to rescue the wrongly Convicted Man, just as the Crusading Lawyer lunges to stay the executioner's upraised hand. <br /><br />Great stuff. Standing room only. Free hankies with every performance. <br /><br />Trouble is, history is a lousy screenwriter. The case of the State of Florida vs. Joseph Spaziano-- the 20-year-old murder trial under examination in a Seminole County courtroom-- has all the makings of a first-rate tearjerker. <br /><br />The man about to be executed could well be innocent. The testimony that put him on death row is almost certainly false. And his "trial" was a mockery of the Constitution. It's an alarming story of American justice. But as a box-office blockbuster, it's got one giant problem: <br />The cast stinks.<br /><br />The Wrongly Condemned Man. "Crazy Joe" Spaziano, is no Tom Hanks. He's a tough, scary-looking biker with a monster rap sheet and enough enemies (including several members of his own family) to overflow a medium-sized courtroom.<br /><br />The False-but-Penitent Witness isn't Brad Pitt, all doe-eyed remorse and misguided innocence. He's Tony DiLisio, a fast-talking former acidhead who seems to live permanently on the edge of hysteria. Twenty years ago, as a drugged-out teenager, he succumbed to police entreaties and two sessions of shamelessly suggestive hypnosis to accuse Spaziano, a former buddy, of torture and murder. A born-again Christian, he now admits that he was lying when his hand first rested on the Bible. Still, after days of anguished deliberation, a jury reluctantly believed his fabrication, and Spaziano headed for the electric chair. <br /><br />And the original Crusading Lawyer is no Jimmy Stewart. He's an angry ideologue who writes legal briefs that read like temper tantrums, a guy who insists on referring to his adversaries (including federal appellate judges) by the unprintable names of private body parts. <br /><br />These are not people you're likely to fall in love with. No one is going to become engrossed in this story for its glamour. In fact, many people seem to have missed the point of it entirely, apparently because it consists largely of small-town grotesques with often dark, imponderable motives. <br /><br />All of this may explain how surprised I was when Jim Leusner, a reporter for The Orlando Sentinel, approached me last week outside Judge O.H. Eaton Jr.'s courtroom in Seminole County, during a break in the Spaziano hearing. to ask me this remarkable question: <br /><br />"Has The Herald lost its objectivity on this story?" <br /><br />Huh? Lost its objectivity? For what? Because its reporters and editors were somehow enthralled by the allure of these magnetic personalities? Entranced by their Gandhi-like serenity? Blinded by their charm? <br /><br />What element of this story, I wanted to ask him, would have caused The Herald suddenly to shed its principles? No matter how little one might think of this newspaper--and I happen to think quite highly of it-- what possible motive could there be for casting ethics aside in this of all cases? <br /><br />What he meant, I suppose, is that Lori Rozsa, The Herald's lead reporter on this story, was the first journalist to pierce through to DiLisio's conscience and hear him admit his 20-year-old lie. On June 9, Rozsa went to DiLisio's Pensacola home seeking his view of his flimsy 1975 testimony. After getting the door slammed in her face, she used the salesman's classic stratagem she thrust her foot past the doorjamb. DiLisio soon gave in and finally told her what he previously had told only his pastor. He lied and had sent a man to probable death. <br /><br />That was dramatic (and top-notch) reporting. It demonstrated Rozsa's skill and determination. It yielded a Page One story. What it did not do is alter The Herald's interest in the case of Florida vs Spaziano. <br /><br />Well before Rozsa ever went to Pensacola--in fact, before her editor was even convinced that it was worth the trip--The Herald already had prepared an editorial saying that Spaziano's trial was a hopelessly <br /><br />[image-Proscio] [image caption- Tony Proscio was the Herald's associate editor from 1992-95. Now New York City's deputy commissioner of homeless services he wrote this article for the Herald] [end of Page one] <br /><br />[beginning of Page two] deficient basis for executing him. <br /><br />Why? Because we had read the transcripts of the trial and of DiLisio's abracadabra "hypnosis." Because we looked for corroboration, physical evidence, convincing testimony, and found absolutely none. Before the witness had recanted anything, before any Herald reporter had met him or even contemplated meeting him, keen observers of the legal system inside and outside the paper already had smelled the constitutional stench of a shamefully bad trial.<br /><br />The Florida Supreme Court, intrigued by DiLisio's recantation and Rozsa's reporting, eventually ordered the current hearing. As a result, Judge Eaton is expected to decide today or sometime very soon whether he believes what DiLisio says today, or what he said 20 years ago. <br /><br />Yet in all this high legal drama, the heart and soul of this horrendous matter seems to have been lost. Namely: The case against Spaziano smelled to high heaven before The Herald ran the first story on it. It was a phony prosecution, based on a single witness with a disastrous drug habit, several clear motives to lie, a story that took weeks (and two sessions of hypnotic suggestion) to concoct and a number of assertions that contradicted the known evidence. <br /><br />Were there two bodies or one? Were they side-by-side or piled one atop the other? Were they both young, or was one of them noticeably elderly? Were they covered or in plain view? Were they in a dump or an orange grove? Did Spaziano boast of murdering them or merely hint of committing other, similar murders? All of that depends on when the teenage DiLisio was talking, and to whom. Yet the whole prosecution of Joe Spaziano rested on this one troubled kid's twisted, incredible tale. <br /><br />Don't believe me. Believe the state's prosecutor at trial: "If you don't believe Tony DiLisio," he told the jury then, "the only possible verdict was not guilty." Eventually jurors reached the wrong conclusion. But don't blame them: No one ever told them about the hypnosis or the contradictions. <br /><br />Whether to believe Tony DiLisio is a crucial issue, but it's not the fundamental issue. The fundamental issue has nothing to do with DiLisio, or with Lori Rozsa, or with The Herald. It has to do with the electric chair, with justice and with this simple question: <br /><br />Does Florida dare -- does any decent society dare-- to electrocute a human being based on a trial like the one they gave Joe Spaziano 20 years ago? And if so, why bother with trials at all? <br /><br />That's what I should have said to Sentinel reporter Jim Leusner. Sometimes, though, the truest things don't come to your mind right away. Sometimes, you have to think things through awhile to get them right. Sometimes, the truth can take 20 years to tell. <br /><br />[image-Rozsa] [image caption- Rozsa] <br /><br />[end of Page two] Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Nameroff, Griffin Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A phony trial and a crucial issue: Justice Subject The topic of the resource False testimony Witnesses Description An account of the resource On January 21, 1996, the Miami Herald reported that Tony DiLisio admitted to lying in his testimony in the Spaziano trial twenty years prior. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Proscio, Tony Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Proscio, Tony. "A phony trial and a crucial issue: Justice." Miami Herald, January 21, 1996, C1. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-01-21 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Language A language of the resource English Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 2 JPGs 300DPI Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Miami, FL https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/5610a6453d79eddaeb82d9f6ce824c1b.jpg bfd33fcd8302b711a9b49f3c2015c564 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/c19b485d412c41dff3c25e2fd86769cf.jpg 8d1b7685b8bf6a836aa3338fd7a26784 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [start page one]<br /><br /><span>[heading] </span><br />A witness Says He Lied, But the Execution Is On<br /><br /><span>[subheading] </span><br />Florida Says Case Review Raises No Doubt<br /><br />By Larry Rother<br /><br /><span>[start of the first column] </span><br />MIAMI, Sept. 30- At his trial, no physical evidence linked Joseph Spaziano to the murder of a young Orlando woman, only a drug-addled teenager's lurid testimony about being taken to a garbage dump and shown the sexually mutilated decomposing remains of the victim. That was all the jurors needed to convict him.<br /><br />But now, 20 years later, with Mr. Spaziano's death warrant already signed and the electric chair waiting, that witness, Tony DiLisio, has come forward to say he lied. He fabricated the story, he asserts, to please police investigators, who planted details of his testimony in his memory during hypnosis and promised to spring him from a drug rehabilitation center if he cooperated<br /><br />"I've been bound up in lies, and I finally made a decision to do what's right," Mr, Dilisio, a 38-year-old automobile restore and lay preacher who lives in Pensacola, Fla., said in a telephone interview. "I've been shaking inside for the last 20 years, and it finally came tome to speak the truth. I had a path I had to choose because the man was going to be expected in two weeks."<br /><br />But despite Mt. DiLisio's recanting his story and other irregularities that have been documented but lawyers, private investigators, and <br /><br /><span>[start of the second column] </span><br />newspaper reporters, reexamining the Soaxiano case, Florida is pressing ahead with its effort to electrocute Mr. Spaziano. Earlier this month, Gov. Lawton Chiles denied that "there has been no rush to judgment on this thing," and assailed Mr. Spaziano's lawyer, saying his tactics "look pretty manufactured to me."&nbsp;<br /><br />By his own admission, Mr. Spaziano was anything but a model citizen when he was arrest for the 1973&nbsp;<br />torture-murder of Laura Lynn Harberts, an 18-year-old hospital clerk. President of the Orlando chapter of the Outlaws motorcycle gang, Mr. Spaziano earned the nickname Crazy Joe from his erratic behavior after a truck ran over his head in his hometown of Rochester. He was also well-known in Central Florida as a marijuana dealer, fence, and pimp.<br /><br />But transcripts of the trial reveal that the prosection's case against Mr. Spaziano rested not on his notoriety but almost exclusively on the account of Mt DiLisio, who was a 16-<br /><br /><span>[start of the third column] <br /></span>year-old biker wannabe at the time of the killing. "If we cant get in the testimony of Tony Dilisio, we'd have absolutely no case whatsoever," one prosecutor told the judge on the case at the time.<br /><br />What the jurors were not told was that Mr. DiLiso's testimony had been induced by hypnosis. Nor was the panel informed that his only visit to the murder site was conducted by police, who were frustrated at his inability to recall even the most basic details of the killing under hypnosis.<br /><br />In 1985, a decade after Mt. Spaziano was convicted, the Florida Supreme Court ruled the testimony derived from memories refreshed by hypnosis is so intrinsically suspect as to be inadmissible in court. But, in an effort to avoid a series of lengthy and costly retrials the decision was not applied retroactively, and Mr. Spaziano's conviction stood.<br /><br />"They should have ordered a new trail back the," argued Michael Mello, a lawyer who, until recently, had been representing Mr. Spaziano since the case was handed over to him the day he joined the public defender's office more than a decade ago."This is the only capital case I am aware of in which the critical testimony was the product of hypnosis."<br /><br />Mr. Mello now teaches law at the Vermont Law School in South Royalton, VT., and had continued to handle the Spaziano case on a pro bono basis until the Florida Supreme Court removed him from the case, criticizing him got what the justices called his "flagrant disregard of this Court's procedures and directions."<br /><br />Mr. Mello said in a telephone interview that he had represented more than 70 condemned men but that Mr. Spaziano is the only one he was absolutely convinced was innocent.&nbsp;<br /><br />According to affidavits Mr. Mello has obtained from the jurors in the case, Mr. Spaziano's conviction was obtained despite lingering doubts,<br />[end page one]<br /><br /><span>[start page two]<br /><br />[start of the fourth column] <br /></span>But as Justice Gerald Kogan a member of the Florida Supreme Court who has criticized what he calls the state's "unseemly rush to execute a man," noyed recently, judges in Florida no longer have authority. Instead, the "jury's vote for life imprisonment would be legally binding today," and Mr. Spaziano would automatically be spared the electric chair even if convicted.<br /><br />At the time he was being questioned, Mr. DiLisio was a frequent user of LSD and marijuana who had been sentenced to a drug rehabilitation center and was largely estranged from his family. Police detective took him to see Joe B. McCawley, a hypnotist whose work had been previously discredited in another notorious Florida murder trial.&nbsp;<br /><br />During an initial hypnosis session, the transcript reveals, Mr. DiLisio was not helpful, talking of hearing Mr. Spaziano brag about hiding stolen motorcycles at an orange grove by a lake but supplying no useful details about the Jarberts killing.<br /><br />But two days later after police took him to the garbage dump to "refresh" his memory. Mr. DiLisio<br /><br /><span>[Image of Joseph Spaziano- Associated Press] <br /><br /></span>was again put into a light trance and questioned. This time, after some prodding, was asked about a corpse he said: "I think I saw one," but then described the remains as that of "an old woman" before Mr. McCawley furnished him with the correct details.<br /><br />Mr. DiLisio said that he has known all along that "what I did was bad," but thought that because perjury laws "I would have to go to prison for it if I ever brought the truth forward." He now accuses the police of brainwashing and manipulation him, describing himself as a frightened and confused teen-ager, eager&nbsp;<br /><br /><span>[start of the fifth column] <br /></span>for attention and affection and eager to get out of juvenile detention at any cost.<br /><br />"I was like a fog on a leash, with a bone in front of me," he said. "They liked what I did, and it gave me gratification that I was cooperating with them. I was a disturbed child at that time."<br /><br />Following the public outcry about the case as a result of Mr. DiLisio's recantation in June, Gov. Lawton Chiles issued an indefinite stay of execution pending investigation by the Florida Police Department of Law Enforcement. On Aug. 24, though he signed another death warrant, saying that "this exhaustive review removes any doubt in my mind about the case."&nbsp;<br /><br />Since the death penalty was restored in Florida in 1978, 34 people have died in the electric chair, making the state second only to Texas in the number of executions. During his successful reelection campaign last year, Mr. Chiles, a populist Democrat, was stung on television ads sponsored by a conservative opponent, Republican Jeb Bush, that accused him of being soft on the more 300 convicted killer sitting on the state's death row.<br /><br />Just after Labor Day the Florida Supreme Cout rejected, by a 4-3 voted, a request for an indefinite stay of execution and approved a Sept. 21 execution for Mr. Spaziano in the electric chair at the Florida State prision in Starke, But less than a week later the court partially reversed itself, ordering a hearing on the new evidence by Nov. 15.<br /><br />Mr. Spaziano's case is now being handled by a state agency that presents indigent inmates on death row, and by a Miami law firm.<br /><br />To help the proceedings along, Mr. DiLision has agreed to take a polygraph test, be injected with truth serum to yo cooperate in any other fashion that is requested.<br /><br />"I don't know whether Jow Spaziano is guilty or innocent," Mr. DiLisio said. "but I know that I lied then and that the only thing I have to gain now is a clear conscience. I'm not defensive, I'm not confused. I have no fear, and as long as I speak the truth at all times, I can stand strong, and the truth will prevail."<br />[end of page two]<br /><span><br />[end of article]</span> Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Williams, Megan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A witness says he lied, but the execution is on Subject The topic of the resource Death Penalty Witnesses Description An account of the resource A witness in the Spaziano case says that he lied and fabricated the story of Spaziano murdering a young Orlando women. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rother, Larry Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The New York Times Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-10-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 300 dpi 2 JPGs Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Miami, Fl https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/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/a1c8c1486997650064e8f392793a81c3.jpg b7eb9f3c7afbbc93fb9c794090a46c67 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [heading] <br />An Outlaw's road <br /><br />[subheading] <br />By Bruce Vielmetti Times Staff Writer <br /><br />[start of the first column] <br />TAMPA -- Clarence Smith wears many marks of an Outlaw. <br /><br />He's got the tattoos, the Harley-Davidson cap, the vest with the skull and crossed pistons and "1 percenter" patches.<br /><br />He also carries the invisible scars of nine years on Louisiana's death row, and the distinction of being the only inmate to leave there a free man.<br /><br />His story got little publicity last year, in part because Smith avoided it. While someone else might have held news conferences and gone on talk shows to decry injustice or seek redress, Smith got a Harley and followed Outlaw Motorcycle Club advice to "go party for a year and get my mind right."<br /><br />Then authorities in Tampa last fall announced the indictment of 18 Outlaws and associates. At a biker funeral in Buffalo, Smith volunteered to come here and hold down the fort at the group's clubhouse of Busch Boulevard.<br /><br />"I was the freshest (out of prison), the cleanest," Smith said. Life on the road was good, he said, "but you gotta have a purpose."<br /><br />His was to support the "brothers" in the latest trial, and to try to get the Tampa chapter back on its feet. He was a daily spectator at the 41 1/2-month trial, where witnesses and prosecutors suggested his presence was just another part of the Outlaws ongoing criminal enterprise.<br /><br />Smith, 51, recently broke his silence about the Tampa case, his own brush with execution, and that of Joseph "Crazy Joe" <br />[end of the first column] <br /><br />[start of the second column] <br /><strong><br />A report in Spaziano's case is disputed. Page 5B </strong><br /><br />[text continued]<br />Spaziano, 50 another veteran Outlaw whose scheduled death in Florida's electric chair was delayed last week after questions were raised about the fairness of his conviction.<br /><br />"The parallels in the two cases are striking," said Spaziano's attorney, Michal Mello. "I'm hoping the final parallel will be that in a retrial, Joe will be acquitted."<br /><br />Smith said he plans to retire from the Outlaws Motorcycle Club soon, but remain a kind of ambassador for the group, which he says law enforcement has unfairly prosecuted for decades. <br /><br />"They've got us targeted for extinction," Smith says. He blames federal racketeering, or RICO laws, that he says make any unpop-<br />[end of the second column] <br /><br />[start of the third column] <br />ular group subject to persecution. "It's us today and y'all tomorrow." <br /><br /><strong>Zero tolerance</strong> <br /><br />That has been a familiar refrain of Outlaws and their sympathizers. But over the years, law enforcement has prosecuted dozens of members successfully for everything from prostitution to heinous murders.<br /><br />In the recent Tampa case, four Daytona members were found guilty of racketeering conspiracy, and 10 Tampa Bay defendants were found guilty of drug and gun charges. However, half the jury was highly critical of the government's elaborate undercover sting that led to the drug charges. <br /><br />Government witnesses portrayed the <br /><br />Please see <strong>ROAD</strong> 7B <br />[end page] Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Vol. No./Issue No. Volume and issue number for the newspaper (if available) vol. 68, issue 6 Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Harrison, William Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource An Outlaw's Road Description An account of the resource The article is a short account of a "outlaw." Clarence Smith was a convicted felon and spent nine years on death row. His story draws many parallels to Joseph Spaziano's according to Spaziano's lawyer. The article continues to briefly talk on Clarence and his work to ensure fairness in trials for felons from his biker gang. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Vielmetti, Bruce Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment Gang members Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 JPG 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Vielmetti, Bruce, “An Outlaw's Road,” HIST298, https://hist299.umwhistory.org/admin/items/show/236. https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/b89ae1c1f1a3e2ba7487c943d91c6d0b.jpg 73a6f7c5fcda20c6fd64c63f0abd0d22 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. DiBenedetto, Ashleigh Text Any textual data included in the document [header] The Times-Union, Jacksonville, Friday, September 8, 1995 [heading] Florida Report Arguments heard in death appeal By Jackie Hallifax Associated Press [start of column 1] Tallahassee— An attorney for Joseph “Crazy Joe” Spaziano asked the state Supreme Court for a chance to prove his client is innocent of the murder sending him to the electric chair in two weeks. A lawyer for the state, however, urged the justices not to stay Spaziano’s execution on “mere speculation.” After hearing oral arguments yesterday, Florida’s high court will make a decision at its own discretion. Spaziano, 49, is scheduled to be executed Sept. 21 for the murder-mutilation of an Orlando woman 22 years ago. During the hourlong hearing, justices and lawyers had exchanges about testimony at a trial held nearly 20 years ago, about judicial procedure, about the role of the state’s high court in reviewing capital cases. “The proceeding before us has taken a rather free form,” Justice Harry Lee Anstead told Spaziano attorney Michael [end of column one] [begin column two] Mello. “This is the way you have approached this case before the court and it’s obviously causing us considerable difficulty.” Mello, a Vermont law professor, has filed hundreds of pages of pleadings, before Florida’s high court, but he began his presentation by telling justices that all the issues were secondary because his client did not kill Laura Lynn Harberts. The 18-year-old hospital clerk’s body was found in an Altamonte Springs dump in August 1973. “I believe that if I had an opportunity to prove MR. Spaziano’s innocence before a jury, he would be acquitted,” Mello said. Anthony Dilisio, a key prosecution witness in Spaziano’s trial, recanted his testimony this year, prompting Gov. Lawton Chiles to suspend Spaziano’s fourth death warrant. However, after an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement into the recent comments by Dilisio, Chiles said he had no doubts about the case and signed a fifth death warrant last month. [end column two] Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Arguments heard in death appeal Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-09-08 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 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 Jacksonville, FL Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jackie Hallifax Subject The topic of the resource Capital Punishment Lawton, Chiles Description An account of the resource Death row inmate requests appeal in case two weeks before execution. Capital punishment. Chiles Lawson death penalty Michael A. Mello https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/efc922b9a5eac76a3da2920147d1ab6e.jpg 742377a2469986378c325a3e52703c81 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] Attorney problems complicate Spaziano case [start of the first column] A convicted killer scheduled for execution Sept. 21 in Florida’s electric chair is being represented during what may be the last three weeks of his life by an attorney who is teaching full time at a Vermont law school and has no assistance here. Joseph Spaziano’s attorney, Michael Mello, must work on the case without the usual support staff because the organization that does that work has lost its funding and is closing down. [end of the first column] [start of the second column] “This is an innocent guy in the middle of a very complex factual investigation,” Mello said. “He’s about to be executed in three weeks and for all practical purposes, he doesn’t have a lawyer.” Complicating Mello’s ability to provide a defense is that new investigative information about the case has been ordered confidential by Gox. Lawton Chiles. Dexter Douglass, Chiles’ clemency attorney, says all those arguments are simply defense tactics. [end of the second column] [start of the third column] Spaziano, who will be 50 on Sept. 12, is accused of the 1973 murder of Orlando nurse Laura Lynn Harberts, whose sexually mutilated body was found in a trash dump near Altamonte Springs, a suburb of Orlando. Spaziano, a former member of the Outlaw motorcycle gang, was convicted primarily on the testimony of a man named Tony Dilisio and Harberts’ roommate, who told authorities she heard Harberts talking on the phone with a man named Joe before she was murdered. Spaziano had been under his fourth death warrant in June when Dilidio told The Miami Herald that he gave his [end of the third column] See Spaziano on Page 2B [heading] Spaziano Continued from Page 1B [start of the fourth column] Testimony under hypnosis. Testimony taken under hypnosis was admissible in Florida at the time, but is no longer. Chiles stayed the execution and asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate Dilisio’d comments. The FDLE report was submitted to Chiles several weeks ago and a new death warrant was signed last week. Chiles will not release the contents of the FDLE report, but Douglass said it confirms Spaziano’s guilt. “That information is not going to become public at any time,” Douglass said. “We don’t need that information, just the findings from 15 court decisions that these are legal sentences.” The day after the warrant was signed, the Volunteer Lawyers Post-Conviction Defender Organization notified Mello that because of a $1.5 million cut in federal funding, it will shut down Sept. 30. The organization has been ordered by its directors to stop working on cases immediately. That left Mello, who started teaching classes the following day, without any Florida lawyers working with him and without the services of Stephen Gustat, the organization investigator who was doing research for him. Jennider Greenberg, the organization’s co-director, ex- [end of the fourth column] [start of the fifth column] plained the problem to Mello in an Aug. 28 letter. “We tried our best to inform the governor’s people about the impossibility of us representing or assisting pro bono counsel in representing anyone under an active death warrant during this phase in our existence,” Greenberg wrote. “Inexplicably, the governor chose to seek Joe’s execution nonetheless.” The Office of Capital Collateral Representatives, the state agency that represents most Death Row inmates in Florida, cannot defend Spaziano because it has a conflict in the case. Mello said that in his 12 years of defending death row inmates, he has never faced a situation like this. “I thought I had seen it all,” he said. “I’ve never had my whole investigative arm evaporate on the eve of a fifth death warrant in the face of a whitewash, fraudulent and now secret police investigation that the governor’s counsel has lied about, when I am representing an innocent man.” Douglass said Mello is just trying to create an issue in a losing case, and that he does have an investigator – he said the news media have helped investigate the case. Meanwhile, Mello has asked The Florida Bar and the state Supreme Court for advice. “I have real reservations about whether I can render effective counsel,” he said. “Joe has a right to counsel in Florida. I don’t know that I can give it to him. But if I withdraw, he has no lawyer. Yet without investigation, I’m nothing but the illusion of a lawyer. I just don’t know what to do.” [end of the fifth column] [end of the article] 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. Treese, Paige Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Attorney problems complicate Spaziano case Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Greenberg, David Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Gainesville Sun Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-09-3 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 Description An account of the resource Attorney Michael Mello is left with little time or support to work on Joseph Spaziano's case after the organization supporting Mello on the case is shut down only three weeks before Spaziano's execution. 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/fd8003073e343572ea4b0d371566318d.jpg d36aade3add45618376dd5bb9d236e88 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/84bf395ca77754b3345da5e8e029c5d4.jpg a42455caea2fd025bd17caad2784381c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Vol. No./Issue No. Volume and issue number for the newspaper (if available) vol. 68, issue 5 Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Friedrich, Alex Text Any textual data included in the document [first page] [heading] Case shows changing role of governors in death appeals By John D. McKinnon Herald Legal Correspondent [start of the first column] TALLAHASSEE -- Joe Spaziano, scheduled to die this month in Florida's electric chair, is a wrongly-convicted man, his attorney argues, a mistake the state wants to bury. But What's just as bad, his lawyer says, is the way Florida officials are going about it: By using secret evidence to justify Spaziano's execution, they're burying the whole case. "A constitutional abomination," gripes Michael Mello, Spaziano's volunteer lawyer. Without intending to, state officials also have thrust the Spa- [end of the first column] [start of the second column] How should inmates' belated claims of innocence be handled? [text] ziano case into the middle of one of the hottest debates in death penalty law. The question is this: As more and more condemned inmates raise belated and frequently bogus claims of innocence, how should the system handle them? In particular, as judges make it [start of the third column] harder for inmates to raise such claims in court, how should governors still have unchecked powers in matters of life and death, like kings of old? Or should governors be forced to hear the prisoners' pleas all over again? In Florida, the question came up when Gov. Lawton Chiles signed a new death warrant for Spaziano based on the results of a confidential investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Chiles asked for the investigation after the key [end of the third column] PLEASE SEE SPAZIANO, 10A [heading] Critics question use of 'secret' evidence to justify execution SPAZIANO, FROM 1A [start of the first column] witness in Spaziano's trial 20 years ago recanted his testimony. Spaziano, an Outlaws motorcycle gang member, was convicted in 1975 of murdering an 18-year-old Orlando woman, Laura Harberts. But the key witness at trial, Tony DiLisio, said in June that he wasn't shown Harberts' body by Spaziano as he had testified, but was manipulated by police and a government-hired hypnotist. According to summaries of the FDLE investigation, the agency has located people who said they recalled hearing statements over the years that implicated Spaziano. None of the witnesses have been identified, none of their statements have been disclosed. Few, if any, of the statements appear to be admissible in court because they're hearsay. Those that might be admissible come from a former biker who's in a federal witness protection program -- just the sort of witness that juries often disbelieve. The state's Public Records Law specifically allows clemency records to be kept secret and Chiles says he intends to keep the names and statements in the investigation confidential. Some of the witnesses were promised anonymity, out of fear of the Outlaws, officials say. That hasn't been enough to satisfy some death penalty critics. "It seems as if there's something that he's hiding," said Kica Matos, research director for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's Capital Punishment Project. "It sure ain't fair," said William T. Geimer, a Washington and Lee University law professor and nationally recognized death penalty expert. Maybe. But is it legal? Based on the courts' traditional approach to the death penalty experts say, the answer would appear to be: Yes. "The problem is that the courts -- the federal courts and the Supreme Court especially -- have always been extremely reluctant to say anything to governors about how to conduct their business at the end of a death-penalty case," says Hugo Adam Bedau, a Tufts University professor. That tradition is under growing pressure, experts say, as condemned inmates raise more and more claims of innocence, and federal judges are finding more and more ways to avoid hearing them. Such claims have been multiplying as wily death-penalty appeal lawyers shift their focus from attacking capital-punishment laws to attacking the facts of their clients' cases. And innocence claims have a [end of the first column] [start of the second column] big advantage, appeals lawyers have found: After 10 or 15 years, even solid murder cases become vulnerable to assault. Evidence corrodes or breaks down. Police lose their files. A surprising number of people turn up who are able or willing to take the rap -- for instance, other inmates who are suffering from terminal illness or who've died. That has happened more than once in recent years, to the enormous frustration of officials like Chiles. "The [death penalty lawyers] are good," Chiles said in a recent interview with the Herald editorial board. "They have something in every one of these cases." While Florida's Supreme Court has remained relatively [end of the second column] [start of the third column] open to new claims of innocence, many other judges -- especially federal judges -- are getting fed up. "They've become convinced that all the innocence issues anyone raises are fraudulent," says Bruce Ledewitz, a Duquesne University law professor and a noted capital punishment opponent. The problem is, Ledewitz argues, the federal courts "haven't yet come up with any system that winnow out the good claims from the bad ones. They've just decided to execute everyone." The federal courts' resistance to innocence claims crystalized in a case called Herrera vs. Collins, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1993. In the Herrera case, the high court [end of the third column] [start of the fourth column] decided that federal courts didn't have to hear most belated claims of innocence in old capital cases because that's what state governors were for. And that's created the latest legal issue for Spaziano. "The Herrera decision blesses governors as a part of the capital punishment process," explains Geimer, the Washington and Lee University professor. "So if they are now going to be a part of the process, the next question is, are there going to be rules? Can you have a secret investigation?" Contends Daniel T. Kobil, a law professor at Capital University in Ohio: "It seems to me that if the governor's clemency power is to serve as a failsafe in our constitutional system, it has to be administered in a fundamentally [end of the fourth column] [start of the fifth column] fair way. This one-sided, secretive procedure the Florida governor is engaging in seems to me to fall far short of that." Spaziano's lawyer, Vermont law professor Mello, is making exactly that argument to the state Supreme Court in seeking to se the report. "He doesn't have any right to look at it," replies Dexter Douglass, the governor's general counsel. "The governor's not a court." Mello is a former West Palm Beach public defender. [end of article] Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Case shows changing role of governors in death appeals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McKinnon, John D. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived McKinnon, John D. "Case shows changing role of governors in death appeals." The Miami Herald, September 2, 1995, A1. Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-09-02 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 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Tallahassee, FL Description An account of the resource As a result of the 1993 U.S. Supreme Court case, Herrera vs. Collins, state governors became the designated figures to acknowledge the most belated claims of innocence in old capital cases. However, after Tony DiLisio recanted his previous testimony, which incriminated Joe Spaziano, Gov. Lawton Chiles signed a new death warrant for Spaziano based on evidence gathered from a confidential investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. By using secret evidence to reinforce Spaziano’s execution, death-penalty critics believe Chiles’ actions to be unconstitutional. Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment Spaziano, Joe https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/d0050e03fd91b3530287b15401e2e5aa.jpg 52677029bdafccec8fe5f73ef0356a2f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [Page header] B-2 ** The Times-Union, Jacksonville, Saturday, September 9, 1995 [End Page Header] [Article Title] Court denies stay for Spaziano By Jackie Hallifax Associated Press [End Article Title] [Column One] TALLAHASSEE -- The Florida Supreme Court refused yesterday to stay the execution of Joseph "Crazy Joe" Spaziano but ordered a lower court to hold a hearing within a week into his claims of innocence. In an unsigned opinion, the justices agreed a trial judge should consider the recent recantation of a key prosecution witness who said he lied during Spaziano's trial nearly 20 years ago. But the state's high court split 4-3 in its refusal to delay the execution. [End Column One] [Column Two] Spaziano, 49, is scheduled to die in Flordia's electric chair Spet. 21 for the August 1973 murder-mutilation of Laura Lynn Harberts, 18, of Orlando. Herberts body was found in an Altamonte Springs dump. The key witness at Spaziano's trial was Anthony DiLisio, who recanted his testimony earlier this year, prompting Gov. Lawton Chiles to suspend Spaziano's fourth death warrant. However, after an investigation by the Flordia Department of Law Enforcement into the recent comments by DiLisio, Chiles said he had no doubts about the case and signed a fifth death warrant last month. [End Column Two] [Column Three] Richard Martell, who oversees the state lawyers who defend death sentences, said he was still studying the decision. Micheal Mello, the Vermont law professor who represents Spaziano, did not respond to a request for reaction. Dexter Douglass, Chiles' general counsel, said a week should be sufficient for a lower court to hold a hearing. "There's plenty of time for this hearing," he said. "there's plenty of time for it to come back up to the Supreme Court." The trial court will decide if the recanted testimony is credible and substantial enough to probably change the verdict, according to the majority opinion. [End Column Three] 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. Shinkle, Timothy Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Court denies stay for Spaziano Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jackie Hallifax Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Times-Union Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-09-09 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. Language A language of the resource English Description An account of the resource This article reviews the Flordia Supreme Court's 4-3 split when deciding to stay Joseph Spaziano's death sentence after a key witness recanted their statement from twenty years ago. Subject The topic of the resource Capital Punishment Spaziano, Joseph Chiles, Lawton Herberts, Laura DiLisio, Anthony Florida. Supreme Court Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 JPG 300 DPI Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Jacksonville, FL https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/0c7745f1b36406e41441ac9aef9131c0.jpg adf345c2c338b4d76b74efe90903a218 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/1f9c2d0044559bc97d6a134564364629.jpg 3aff514163449f12014babed2d969283 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 <p>[start of page one]<br /><br />[header]<br />Despite the lack of paperwork, some justices seem to favor caution in the case, but has been under various appeals for the last 20 years and which the state wants to conclude. <br /><br />[title]<br />Court Faces a Quandary on Spaziano <br /><br />[start of the first column]<br />TALLAHASSEE – Florida’s Supreme Court appears torn over the plight of Joseph ”Crazy Joe” Spaziano, facing execution in 13 days for murder he claims he didn't commit.<br /><br />It's clear from a heated debate at the court Thursday that justices are torn over a lack of proper paperwork and last-minute pleadings in the case. <br /><br />They are torn to buy the news that the central figure in Spaziano’s 1976<br />[end of the first column]<br /><br />[start of the second]<br />[image]Spaziano<br /><br />[start of the second column]<br />conviction for the killing of 18 year old Laura Harberts says he lied when he tied Spaziano to the murder.<br /><br />Despite the lack of paperwork, some justices seem to favor caution and the case, which has been under various appeals for the last 20 years and which the state wants to conclude. <br /><br />“Remember, the U.S. Supreme Court has said death is different,” Justice Gerald Cogan said Thursday.<br /><br />Incredulously, Cogan ass Estates prosecutor:<br /><br />”It's up to us? As a court? 'To say, ‘We're sorry, Mr. Spaziano, you cannot get any relief fromus, despite the fact that there may be evidence out there that you should get a new trial? It's tough, Mr. Spaziano, we're going to electrocute you because of all the stuff should have been done before?'“ <br /><br />It's unknown when, or how the court will rule on Spaziano’s plea to<br />[end of the second column]<br /><br />[start of the third column]<br />postpone an execution scheduled for Sept. 21 at Florida State Prison near Starke. This is Spaziano’s fifth appointment with electric chair since 1985. <br /><strong><br />Witness Recants</strong> <br />Spaziano’s lawyer, working without pay and without benefit of hiring investigators, is asking for time and money. He wants to show that he witnessed Tony DiLisio was lying in 1975 when he testified that Spa- <br />[end of third column]<br /><br />[start of the second page]<br />[Image with caption]</p> <p>In court: Chief Justice Stephen Grimes, left, and Justice Leander Shaw Jr. have conference.<br /><br />[start of the fourth column]<br />&nbsp;ziano, a member of The Outlaws motorcycle gang, let him to a wooded site and showed him the body of Harberts and another unidentified woman.<br /><br />This year, DiLisio told the herald that he invented the tail and lied on the stand. Spaziano never showed him anybody's, says DiLisio. <br /><br />The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and an inquiry prompted by DiLisio's recantation, concluded that DiLisio told his original story to so many people at the time that he was voicing the truth and lying today. On the strength of this report, which has not been made public, Governor Lawton Chiles ordered Spaziano’s execution. <br /><br />The Supreme Court, particularly senior Justice bin Overton and Justice Harry Lee Anstead, expressed concern that Spaziano’s attorney, Michael Mello, had it included an affidavit from DiLisio that he has recanted his testimony. <br /><br />DiLisio said Thursday that he's ready to sign an affidavit. <br /><br />”We can put it on the fax machine to them right now if they want,” he said. ”What's the big deal?” <br /><br />DiLisio's attorney, Kelly McGraw, said Mello ask for the affidavit earlier this summer. ”He <br />[end of the fourth column]<br /><br />[start of the fifth column]<br /><br />[image] Associated Press<br />[caption] Appeal for time; Michael Mello. attorney for Joseph Spaziano makes his case.<br /><br />[text resumes]<br />asked me to do it, we meant to do it, we just didn't get around to it,” she said.”We have no problem in doing one.” <br /><strong><br />‘Out of Claims’</strong> <br />Margene Roper, Assistant Attorney General, argued that Spaziano faced his last legal chance in the governor's examination of the case. <br /><br />”For the past 20 years Joseph Spaziano has had fly-specking<br />[end of the fifth column]<br /><br />[start of the sixth column]&nbsp;<br />review from all the courts,” she said.”Mr Spaziano is out of claims.” <br /><br />Justice Overton counted the times the court has reviewed Spaziano's death sentence - eight - and complained that Mello didn't come in January after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review it an execution appeared imminent. <br /><br />Overton added angrily:”you have not filed in this record anything that says, quotation I swear quotation. . . An oath by DiLisio.” <br /><br />Mello said he lives in Vermont, and that DiLisio in Pensacola, and that DiLisio is ”difficult to deal with." <br /><br />“If I messed up and not filing. . . In January, please don't take that out on my client,” Mello said.<br /><br />Justice Leander Shaw sounded sympathetic toward Mello’s argument.<br /><br />”He is out of resources,” Shaw said of Spaziano, ”he has no investigator.” <br /><br />Imagine this were you, days away from death, shot told the prosecutor :”why shouldn't he be given a continuance, to see if he can get an investigator for one thing? <br /><br />“I'll grant you,” Kogan agreed that Spaziano’s appeal should already have been filed.<br /><br />”But we are to tell him that, with all that information out there, we're going to let your execution procedure becaU.S.e the attorney didn't file the right motion?”<br /><br /><em>Herald staff writer Lori Rozsa contributed to this report.</em></p> Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data newspaper Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Williams, Megan Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Court faces a quandary on Spaziano Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment Spaziano, Joseph Description An account of the resource The Florida Supreme Court appeals torn over Joseph Spaziano's appeal to prevent his execution for a murder he claims he did not commit. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Silva, Mark Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Hearald Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-09-08 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 300 dpi 2 JPGs Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Florida https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/947dd70c6d9b991d58d605de8a8ed09f.jpg 973e8e3fad62451a946bffb7d88c8fbb https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/540d35160035eecc47f7e1f22ddec544.jpg 164311b72d0b7e50e15358041221889e https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/b415b0ed37076ab6eb0e059ca71e8816.jpg c01404625591ceca5823f6de35f53d5b 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. Roszell, William Text Any textual data included in the document <div> <div>[start of the first page] </div> <div></div> [Text above title]</div> <div>HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR. SPAZIANO</div> <div></div> <div>[Title]</div> <div>Court Gives ‘Crazy Joe’ 11th-Hour Reprieve</div> <div></div> <div>[subtext below title]</div> <div>A lawyer makes his case in the press, convincing hard-bitten editors of the client’s innocence.</div> <div></div> <div>BY LINDA GIBSON</div> <div>SPECIAL TO THE NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL</div> <div></div> <div>[start of the first column] </div> <div></div> <div>CONDEMNED PRISONER Joseph Spaziano gambled that the press could keep the state from executing him. So far, he’s won. On Sept. 12, his 50th birthday, the Florida Supreme Court granted him a stay of execution and ordered a lower court hearing to be scheduled by Nov. 15. He was to have been electrocuted Sept. 21. </div> <div></div> <div>His pro bono attorney, Vermont Law School Prof. Michael Mello, bet Mr. Spaziano’s life on resourceful reporters and eloquent editorials. Sparked by a column Professor Mello wrote for the Miami Herald, the newspaper interviewed the main witness against Mr. Spaziano. The witness told reporter Lori Rozsa that he’d been a drug-addled delinquent teenager who had concocted his story at the prodding of investigators during hypnosis sessions. Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles issued a stay of execution 12 days before the inmate’s June 27 date with Old Sparky. But on Aug. 24, the governor reversed himself and issued a fifth death warrant based on the confidential statements of newly found witnesses whom he has refused to identify publicly.</div> <div></div> <div>The odds that Mr. Spaziano would beat this lat-<br /> <div>[end of the first column] </div> <div></div> <br /> <div>[start of the second column] </div> <div>est warrant were as slim as the evidence that put him on death row 19 years ago.</div> </div> <div></div> <div>In 1975, police charged “Crazy Joe” Spaziano, a member of the Outlaws motorcycle gang in Orlando, with the 1973 rape-torture slaying of 18-year-old hospital clerk Laura Lynn Harberts. Her remains were found in a rural garbage dump along with those of another still-unidentified victim. The prosecution’s sole evidence was the testimony of Anthony DiLisio, who said Crazy Joe took him to the dump to view the corpses and described how he had tortured the girls by showing them pieces of their bodies that he had sliced off. State v. Spaziano, 393 So.2d 1119 (Fla. Sup. Ct. 1981).</div> <div></div> <div>Sensational though it was, even prosecutor Claude Van Hook acknowledged Mr. DiLisio’s testimony was the state’s total case against Mr. Spaziano. “If you don’t believe Tony DiLisio,” he told the jury at the 1975 trial, “then find this defendant not guilty in five minutes.”</div> <div></div> <div>Jurors deadlocked twice in six hours. Finally, they came back with a guilty verdict but recommended life in prison. Seminole County Circuit Court Judge Robert McGregor overruled them and sentenced Mr. Spaziano to death. Jurors didn’t know, the judge told reporters later, that the defendant had a previous conviction for rape.</div> <div></div> <div></div> <div><strong>Harbored a Grudge</strong></div> <div></div> <div>They also didn’t know, however, that Mr. DiLisio’s testimony had been elicited by hypnosis sessions with a practitioner whose work in other cases had been questioned. In 1985, Florida banned testimony based on hypnosis as unreliable but failed to make the ban retroactive. Mr. DiLisio also had made heavy use of hallucinogenic drugs as a teenage and <br /> <div>[end of the second column] </div> <div></div> <br /> <div>[start of the third column] </div> <div>had harbored a grudge against Mr. Spaziano over the latter’s relationship with his stepmother, defense lawyers say.</div> </div> <div><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Professor Mello and other attorneys raised these points during years of stay applications and briefs.<br /><br /></div> <div><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“None of that made the slightest difference,” he said, citing rules that prohibit state and federal courts from reviewing evidence that wasn’t raised at trial. “Because of all this, no court has ever ruled on the merits of Mr. Spaziano’s evidence demonstrating his innocence.”<br /><br /></div> <div>By the spring of this year, every legal recourse had been exhausted. With a fourth death warrant sign had been exhausted. With a fourth death warrant sign and an execution date set, Professor Mello gave up the law and sought help from a highly reluctant source Miami Herald editor Gene Miller.<br /><br /></div> <div>“People thought I’d lost my mind. The Herald is an extremely conservative institution,” said Professor Mello. “They’re in favor of the death penalty. But I figured if I could convince the Herald, I could convince anyone with an open mind.”</div> <div></div> <div>[End the first page]</div> <div><br />[Start the second page]</div> <div><br />[small text on the right side of the image]</div> <div>AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS</div> <div><br />[Text below image]</div> <div>Turned 50: The stay came on Joseph Spaziano’s birthday.</div> <div><br /><br /></div> <div>[text in box]</div> <div><strong>CASE AT A GLANCE</strong></div> <div>Venue: Florida Supreme Court</div> <div>CONDEMNED PRISONER: Joseph “Crazy Joe” Spaziano</div> <div>DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Prog. Michael Mello of Vermont Law School</div> <div>SUMMARY: Mr. Spaziano, scheduled for execution Sept. 21, was given another reprieve when the Florida Supreme Court ordered a hearing into the recantation of the main witness against him. The witness told a reporter that he had concocted his testimony at the prodding of investigators.</div> <div>[End second image]</div> <div><br />[Start the third page]</div> <div><br />[Start the first column]</div> <div>Mr. Miller’s skepticism as a reporter is legendary. In 1976, he won a second Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the case of Wilbert Lee and Freddie Pitts. They’d spent years on Florida’s death row for a murder that hadn’t committed, until someone else confessed. After Mr. Millers 1875 book “Invitation to a Lynching,” he was deluged with requests from inmates and attorneys who wanted him to look at their cases, too. He said he never expected to see another one like Pitts and Lee.</div> <div></div> <div><strong>Read Transcripts</strong></div> <div>But Mr. Miller agreed to take a phone call from Professor Mello after the lawyer enlisted the aid of a friend who approached Mr. Miller’s daughter. The editor agreed to read a chapter about the Spaziano case in a book Professor Mello was writing on death row representation. Then Mr. Miller asked to see the trail transcript, police reports and tapes of Mr. DiLisio’s hypnosis sessions. On Friday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend, Mr. Miller dropped it all off with another legendary skeptic, investigator Warren Holmes of Holmes Polygraph Services Inc., in Miami.<br /><br /></div> <div>Mr. Holmes has worked with the Herald for 30 years. He’s participated in such cases as the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and President Kennedy and is known for his work on the Pitts and Lee case. <br /><br /></div> <div>He wasn’t happy about Mr. Miller dumping a load of papers on him just before a holiday weekend, but he expected to spend no more than half an hour on them before concluding that Mr. Spaziano was guilty. More than 10 hours later, however, the investigator called Professor Mello. “He told me that he had reviewed between 1,200 and 1,400 transcripts in his time, and he had thought that three men were innocent: Pitts, Lee and Joesph Spaziano,” said Professor Mello.<br /><br /></div> <div>Mr. Holmes next went to the Herald: “I told them there was something radically wrong with the case.”</div> <div>Mention in the records of hypnotist Joe B. McCawley set off bells. Mr. McCawley had helped convict Messrs. Pitts and Lee through a dramatic, but suspect “hypnosis” session of a witness conducted right in the courtroom. Psychologists and psychiatrists have viewed Mr. McCawley’s sessions with Mr. DiLiso with skepticism.<br /><br /></div> <div>“We found the hypnotist is a guy with a very checkered record,” said Herald state desk editor John Pancake. “The key thing you can see looking at the file was [Spaziano] was convicted on hypnotically enhanced testimony. That’s no longer admissible.”<br /><br /></div> <div>Mr. McCawley now is director of the Ethical Hypnosis Training Center in Orlando. Reacting to comments about his work in the case, he said “I would expect that. Ignorance breeds a lot of contempt.”<br /><br /></div> <div></div> <div><strong>Wrote Column</strong></div> <div></div> <div>But before the paper would act, it insisted that Professor Mello write an article about the case. Editors also dictated that the lawyer had to mention within the first few paragraphs that his 70 clients on death row, Mr. Spaziano was the only one he thought was innocent. Professor Mello resisted until the paper delivered an ultimatum: no column, no Herald investigation.<br />[end of the first column]<br /><br />[Start of the second column]</div> <div>Professor Mello capitulated. Mr. Miller edited the column and then took an extraordinary step. Instead of treating the story competitively, he arranged to have it run simultaneously June 4 in the Herald, the St. Petersburg Times and the Orlando Sentinel. He also called syndicated columnists James J. Kilpatrick, who responded with a column published June 8 calling on Governor Chiles to issue clemency.</div> <div><br />Meanwhile, Herald reporter Ms. Rozsa found Mr. Dilisio, now a sober, 38-year-old part-time preacher, in Pensacola. On her third attempt to talk to him, he let her in and spilled his guts.</div> <div><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>He didn’t remember Crazy Joe taking him to the dump. <br /><br />He didn’t remember the hypnosis, the trail and his testimony. “How do I know what I said back then was reliable? Especially if it came out under hypnosis,” he said. Mr. DiLisio’s recantation, published June 11, fell like a bomb on the seemingly unalterable course of events that follow the signing of a death warrant. Said Mr. Pancake. “We were really stunned.”</div> <div><br />The Herald followed up with a June 13 editorial calling on Governor Chiles to halt the execution. On the 14th, it published a detailed article by Associate Editor Tony Proscio that included excerpts from Mr. DiLisio’s hypnosis sessions. “I’m not crusading to save the life of this one guy,” Mr. Proscio said. “This is about procedure, justice and the integrity of the death penalty.”<br /><br /></div> <div>On June 15, Governor Chiles issued a stay and ordered the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate. In addition to interviewing Mr. DiLision, agents found new witnesses who claimed Mr. DiLisio had talked about viewing the bodies even before he was hypnotized and others who said Mr. Spaziano had admitted the killings to them. Agents promised them confidentially because they feared retaliation from the Outlaws. On that basis, and with the help of a recently passed and little-known exemption from Florida’s tough public records laws, the governor sealed the report and issued a fifth death warrant.<br /><br /></div> <div>While reporters try to get hold of the secret report, Professor Mello and public defense lawyers here are arguing over who will represent Crazy Joe for what might be his final hearing.<br /><br /></div> <div>What happens, he’s decided not to take his client’s case back into federal court, a most unusual tactic that dismays his associates. “What we must do is maximize the pressure on Chiles,” he said. “That means, getting access to the report and it’s underlying materials and exposing them as the product of a whitewash with a foreordained conclusion.<br /><br /></div> <div>“During my 12 years as a capital post-conviction litigator, I swore I would never try any of my cases in the media. Now, I swear I will never try one in court.”</div> <div><br />[End of article]</div> Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Court gives 'Crazy Joe' 11th-hour reprieve Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gibson, Linda 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 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The National Law Journal Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 3 JPGs 300 DPI Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-09-25 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 Subject The topic of the resource Spaziano, Joe Death row inmates--Florida--Case studies. Description An account of the resource “Crazy Joe” Spaziano receives a last-minute stay of execution on his 50th birthday September 25, 1995. In 1975 police charged Joe Spaziano with the 1973 rape-torture slaying of 18-year-old hospital clerk Laura Lynn Harberts. Jurors found Spaziano guilty of all charges but recommended life in prison however, Judge Robert McGregor overruled their ruling and sentenced Mr. Spaziano to death citing a previous rape conviction. Professor Mello and other attorneys raised questions about the case and challenged the ruling in court winning multiple stays of execution. "Crazy Joe" Spaziano death penalty Death sentence Florida Death Row Joe Spaziano Michael A. Mello Michael Allen Mello Michael Mello https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/e5aaa56964a24ee4c657192bcb37aac5.jpg dabcc563148ac53e6e1c049b4a2a298a https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/2952d4f5cd491d3281d02dd1316d0299.jpg 7b025e2bf814cdf5c10de13c78263cec 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 <div>[start of page 1]</div> <div>[header] </div> <div>Florida Supreme Court </div> <div>Court hears Spaziano's death appeal</div> <div></div> <div>[subheading] </div> <div>An attorney for convicted murder Joseph Spaziano says his client deserves a chance to prove his innocence.</div> <div></div> <div>[start of the first column]</div> <div>An attorney for Joseph “Crazy Joe” Spaziano asked the state Supreme Court for a chance to prove his client is not guilty of the murder that is sending him to the electric chair in two weeks. </div> <div></div> <div>A lawyer for the state, however, urged the justices not to stay on Spaziano’s execution on “mere speculation.”</div> <div></div> <div>After hearing oral arguments Thursday, Florida’s high court will make a decision at its own discretion; Spaziano, 49, is scheduled to be executed Sept. 21 for the murder and mutilation of an Orlando woman 22 years ago. </div> <div></div> <div>During the hour-long hearing, justices and lawyers had exchanges about testimony at a trial held nearly 20 years ago, about judicial procedure, about the role of the state’s high court in reviewing capital cases. </div> <div></div> <div>“The proceeding before us has taken a rather free form,” Justice Harry Lee Anstead told Spaziano attorney Michael Mello. “This is the way you have approached this case before the court and it’s obviously causing us considerable difficulty.” </div> <div></div> <div>Mello, a Vermont law professor, has filed hundreds of pages of pleadings before Florida’s high court, but he began his presenta-</div> <div>[end of the first column]</div> <div></div> <div>[start of the second column]<br /><br />[image]</div> <div>[Capition]<br /><strong>Spaziano </strong></div> <div>He is scheduled to be executed Sept. 21 for the murder and mutilation of an Orlando woman 22 years<br /><br /></div> <div>[text resumes]</div> <div>tion by telling justices that all the issues were secondary because his client did not kill Laura Harberts. The 18-year-old hospital clerk’s body was found in an Altamonte Springs dump in August 1973.<br /><br /></div> <div><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“I believe that if I had an opportunity to prove Mr. Spaziano’s innocence before a jury, he would be acquitted,” Mello said. “All I’m asking for… is a star of execution and the provision of resources.”</div> <div></div> <div><strong>Witness’s recantation not enough for Chiles</strong></div> <div><span class="Apple-tab-span"> <br /></span>Anthony Dilisio, a key prosecution witness in Spaziano’s trial, recanted his testimony earlier this year, prompting Gov. Lawton Chiles to suspend Spaziano’s fourth death warrant. <br /><br /></div> <div><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>However, after an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement into the recent comments by Dilisio, Chiles said he had no doubts about the case and signed a fifth death warrant last month.<br /><br /></div> <div><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Mello questioned the reliability of the FDLE investigation, which the governor has refused to release, as “supersecret information that supposedly reliable witnesses supposedly told FDLE that supposedly correctly reported to the governor.”<br />[end of the second column]<br /><br />[start of the third column]<br /><br /> <div>[image] Mark Foley/ The Assoicated Press<br /><br /></div> <div>[Capition]<br />"I believe that if I had an opportunity to prove Mr. Spaziano's innocence before a jury, he would be acquitted," attorney Michael Mello said.<br /><br /></div> [text resumes]<br /><br /></div> <div><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>But Instead questioned the strength of Mello’s appeal before Florida’s high court. <br /><br /></div> <div><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>If Mello had filed the proper motion in trial court, he would have been required to meet two tests, Instead said. The first test is whether the recanted testimony was substantial enough to undercut Spaziano’s conviction; the second is whether the issue should have been raised earlier. </div> <div><span class="Apple-tab-span"> <br /></span>Instead asked Mello if he could have jumped through “those two ordinary hoops.”<br /><br /></div> <div><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“I can’t imagine new evidence more substantial than a disavowal of the critical testimony by the wit-<br />[end of the third column]<br /><br />[start of second page] <br /><br />[start of the fourth column]<br />ness,” Mello answered. <br /><br /></div> <div><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Justice Ben Overton then interrupted the attorney, asking why he had not presented an affidavit from Dilisio recanting his testimony.<br /> </div> <div><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“You have not filed in this record anything that says ‘I swear’, an oath by Dilisio,” Overton said.<br /><br /></div> <div><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Justice Gerald Kogan did most of the questioning of Margene Roper, an assistant attorney general who presented the state’s case.<br /><br /></div> <div><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Roper began by arguing that Spaziano had exhausted all his legal claims and was turning to Florida’s high court with issues that properly belonged before a trial court or the governor and Cabinet, sitting as the Clemency Board. </div> <div><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></div> <div><strong>Attorney: Spaziano shouldn’t die over procedural matters<br /><br /></strong></div> <div><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Kogan asks how the justices, regardless of the procedural problems, could ignore the issue of Dilisio’s recantation. <br /><br /></div> <div><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“Apparently there is an allegation out there- and a strong one that the prime witness against the defendant in this particular case has recanted his testimony,” Kogan said.<br /><br /></div> <div><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“Do we sit back and say ‘OK… It’s tough, Mr. Spaziano, we’re going to electrocute you because all these things should have been done before’?” Kogan asked. <br /><br /></div> <div><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Roper replied the case should be seen by another court, disputed that Division had recanted his trial testimony in the FDLE interview and argued he hadn’t recanted his sworn testimony in pre-trial depositions. <br /><br /></div> <div><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“It takes more than speculation after 20 years of litigation and fly-specking review by court upon court to stay an execution,” she said. <br />[end of the fourth]<br /><br />[end article]</div> 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 Court hears Spaziano's death appeal Subject The topic of the resource capital punishment Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hallifax, Jackie Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Tallahasse Democrat 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 Michael Mello, Joseph Spaziano's attorney believes Spaziano deserves a chance to prove his innocence. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 300 dpi 2 JPGs https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/8c7cb7a9c78e95163e358f4944bd188f.jpg a710c7f0a20da86ab6901ee74e52ca7a https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/cf676fc68b73c86c67287ec3a42d03e5.jpg 7f100938c8657e10003e97ee89aaf9ad https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/b1d476a5fd7e114d2a78345dda13c92b.jpg 9a0d75bdb2eb91157f7edf2422c24f5d https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/5c12fe34288d9b6a16ec29e2cfd0f227.jpg 25a87680b848411e215304483ed8fbda https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/80eb0bc18f327a4e673bcd31850fdaa4.jpg 7aaa9c1923d26fac1ea5e67653727b3a https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/4d4da5b4700debcf242f6b71b4261161.jpg a9302b1ddd8d48715cae21fabd73cdf5 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/979e111bdec39d30ca5d7cc8b2bae431.jpg 458cb6261108050abf5c2832f172c561 https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/c61aaeed3d162b0c040d06952ae04cea.jpg 9c1da7152fa7a68e487338fee294d8cc Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael A. Mello Papers, Series 1 News Clippings, Binder 4 Text Text Any textual data included in the document [Page 1] Cover Story/Page 8<br />[title]Current Events<br />[subtitle] This is Florida's electric chair. And here is the story of how two newsperps fought over wheter a man dervered to die in it [End Page 1]<br /><br />[Page 2]<br />[title]Current Events<br />[subtitle] Orlando's hometown newspaper thinks a killer might get off because The Miami Herald crusaded on his behalf. Whose truth is right?<br /><br />On Jan, 22, a Seminole County circuit judge granted Joseph "Crazy Joe" Spaziano a new trial on a 20- year-old conviction for murder. The ruling, now on appeal, capped an eight-month legal [crusade] and presumably shocked readers who followed the story in The Orlando Sentinel. <br /><br />Those who read The Miami Herald, however, were likely less surprised. Indeed, the two papers' competing, sometimes conflicting reports carried over into editorials following Judge O.H. Eaton Jr.'s ruling. "Justice awakens," crowed the Herald. “Justice clearly cheated,” huffed the Sentinel.&nbsp;<br /><br />Who was right? <br /><br />In a way, both. A Herald reporter and editors read Spaziano's trial transcript, passed it off to experts, and [concluded] that the state's star wit- ness against Spaziano, Tony DİLisio, lied when he told a jury here in 1976 that Spaziano had shown him two bodies in a dump. The Herald's reporting raised the idea that DiLisio's original testimony sprang from a suggestive hypnotist, and that he was fed details by authorities who may have promised him lighter punishment for juvenile crimes. The Herald also [resurrected] DiLisio's past with an abusive father and a stepmother Who had some kind of sexual [page end] <br /><br />[page start] relationship with Spaziano, and therefore every motive to use their sons as a way to get back at him. To the question of whether Spaziano received a fair trial based on the paper [concluded] no. <br /><br />But the Sentinel countered with reports from law [enforcement] experts and others, includ- ing the former “old lady" of the once fearsome biker Spaziano, plus two of his brothers, who say Spaziano was involved in other murders and rapes. Darcy Fauss, who lived with Spaziano for about 18 months when he was on the lam, described him to the Sentinel as a sadistic gang enforcer who kept her in virtual slavery. To the question of whether Spaziano is a killer, some former associates say yes. Yet his only conviction for [murder] has now been reversed, and a new trial ordered.<br /><br />The discrediting of DiLisio creates a huge burden for the state to make its case again. But just as difficult is the question that served as undercurrent to the recent coverage: Can Florida afford to put a vicious thug back on the street because prosecu- tors and police did a poor job 20 years ago? Conversely, can Florida afford a standard [justice] that would execute a man based on dubious, and perhaps concocted, evidence? <br /><br />Together, the two papers did an unparalleled job of exploring the complex underpinnings of a death row case. Separately, [however], each paper subtly snubbed the truths reported by their rival, to their readers' detriment. “Orlando Sentinel readers who picked up the Herald on any given day were probably [confused]," posits Ron Sachs, until recently a spokesman for Gov. Chiles, who had signed Spaziano's execution order. <br /><br />If the Sentinel and the Herala competed directly for readers—a once common fact only rarely seen among newspapers today—the Spaziano case would have boosted the circulation of both and fomented a lively debate among readers across their [coverage] area. But because each paper dominates in its own [market], nobody except news [professionals] and elites like Sachs saw the alternative arguments. <br /><br />As efforts to deregulate [communications] hit their stride and leave ever-diminishing circles for competing viewpoints, the Herald-Sentinel contest serves as a parable of sorts for the age of media monopolies<br /><br />Lori Rozsa of the Herald says she took the assignment to check up on the Spaziano case. because it was her turn. <br /><br />Spaziano was only weeks away from his scheduled execution June 27 in the electric chair for killing Laura Harberts, an 18- year-old Orlando hospital clerk. A reinterview of DiLisio, his accuser, would be a routine part of Rozsa's job. <br /><br />"I totally expected him to say I stand by my story; leave me alone," Rozsa says. <br /><br />But DiLisio said he didn't remember his testimony of 20 years earlier. Rozsa didn't believe him. "I kept saying, 'How could you not remember your testimony in a murder case?" <br /><br />Rozsa returned several times to DiLisio's North Florida home with more questions. Finally DiLisio cracked. He said he had made up his testimony against Spaziano, then a member of the Outlaws motorcycle gang, at the urging of police. Suddenly the Herald had a major story. <br /><br />Suddenly all hell broke loose.<br /><br />Along with supportive [editorials] in the St. Petersburg Times, the Herald's coverage caused Chiles to stay the execution. He then ordered the Florida Depart- ment of Law Enforcement to investigate even as Spaziano's Lawyers pushed for a new trial and all before the Sentinel ran a [page end] <br /><br />[page start] single, locally reported place on what should have been, for them, a local story. <br /><br />The FDLE review convinced Chiles to sign another death war- rant. But the Florida Supreme Court ordered a hearing on DILASIO's wavering. Herald edito- rials called for a new trial, while it's news coverage questioned the FDLE report's accuracy. The Sentinel, investigating on its own, lamented the slow pace death penalty justice in its edito- rials and began running stories attacking DiLisio. <br /><br />The newspapers even sniped at one another's reporters. <br /><br />The competition had been sparked in early summer, when Michael Mello, a Vermont law professor who was then Spaziano's lawyer, began urging Gene Miller, a Herald editor, look at the case. For 19 years Spaziano had languished on death row, despite four death warrants. His case had been reviewed 16 times, including once by the U.S. Supreme Court. <br /><br />Miller, who had won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting that overturned another death row conviction, was intrigued. No physical evidence tied Spaziano to Harbert's death and, indeed, the body was so decomposed by the time it was discovered that medical examiners could not even fix a cause of death. Another body found at the same site has never been identified. <br /><br />More troubling was this: Tony DILisio, a 17-year-old acid haad and biker wannabe at the [page end] [page start] Miami cop and founding chair- time of the trial, had been hyp- notized by the same man who had elicited tainted testimony in the earlier overturned case. The Florida Supreme Court banned the use of hypnosis-enhanced testimony in 1985, saying it was inherently unreliable. But the ruling was not retroactive. <br /><br />Mello sent the case file to Miller, who in turn shared it with Warren Holmes, an ex- man of the American Polygraph Association's case review com- mittee. Having read hundreds of murder cases in his 40-year career, Holmes bills himself as an expert in sniffing out perjury, and claims to have worked on major cases from the John F. Kennedy assassination to the William Kennedy Smith rape trial. "I got the file and read it over Memorial Day weekend," he says. "I went back and said DILisio lied through his teeth and they should look into it." <br />And so they did. <br /><br />Mello had written a fiery op ed piece pleading for a new trial, and Miller called friends at the Sentinel and The St. Petersburg Times and asked them to run it as well. It appeared in all three on June 4-seven days before the Herald's first report. <br /><br />"We ran the original plece that Mello wrote," says John Halle, vice president and editor of the Sentinel, But the piece arrived too late for Sentinel editors to confirm its veracity. "We did some research," Haile says. "We wanted a of another point of view, and then we wanted to do a little poking around." <br /><br />The result of the Sentinel's poking, published a month after Mello's op-ed piece and in the midst of the FDLE investigation, was a July 2 story that ques- tioned the assertion by Spaziano's supporters that he was a veritable martyr, and delved into DiLisio's claims to be reformed alcoholic and born- again Christian who had straightened out his life. 64 [page end] <br /><br />[page start] A former state attorney pro- nounced Spaziano "a cold-heart- ed killer," while a check on DILisio found nine Florida arrests, two recent DUIS and a pending court date for stalking. În short, the reformed DiLisio did not appear to be anyone's paragon of veracity and stability. <br /><br />Then again, the Herald never claimed he was. <br /><br />"The guy's a flake," says John Pancake, the Herald state editor who helped direct Rozsa's reporting. "The question is, do you want to send a man to the chair based on the word of a flake? He's not a [page end] [page start] witness for Spaziano; he's a wit- ness for the state. If he is unreli- able, it's the state's problem." <br /><br />Mello refused to talk to the Sentinel after its report. “In my view," he wrote in a fax after Chiles refused Spaziano's request for clemency, "you are an accomplice to murder." <br /><br />With the FDLE report and the governor's refusal, the tle lines were drawn: The Herald would bolster DİLisio's retreat and denigrate both the original investigation and the FDLE report; the Sentinel, with the help of police sources, would blast away both at DiLisio and Spaziano, suggesting the jailed biker is in fact a serial killer without portfolio. <br /><br />"The Orland Sentinel was trying to answer one question: Is 'Crazy Joe' Spaziano a bad guy?" says the Herald's Pancake. "We were trying to answer, 'Did he get a fair trial?" <br /><br />Sentinel editor Haile denies his paper's aim was to paint Spaziano one way or the other. "From the beginning there was just one issue in the case: Is Tony DiLisio telling the truth?" he says. "Everything else had&nbsp;<br /><br />The Sentinel reported DiLisio was being pressured by the Outlaws to change his testimo- ny, and that he was a publicity seeker who may have recanted with an eye toward a book deal.<br /><br />Investigating DiLislo was a duty, Halle says, as was reminding readers what the Outlaws- and Spaziano in particular did and were capable of doing at the time Harberts disappeared. <br /><br />All coverage might have ended with the new Sept. 21 execu- tion date, but for what happened next. Mello obtained a deposition from DILisio in which he, for the first time, recanted under oath. Based on that, the state Supreme Court on Sept. 8 ordered a new hear ing. And Spaziano was spared again. <br /><br />Now things got weird. The FDLE report, which all but doomed Spaziano, was leaked sub- stantially to the Sentinel but minimally to other news out- lets. It con- tained all sorts of evidence not available in the original trial, including state- ments from sev- eral jailhouse snitches. Sealed by the governor's office allegedly to protect the safety of witnesses, the report would never be tested in court. Both the Sentinel and the Herald called for its release But the Herald was unable to speak to its major sources. Prosecutors "wanted to try that case in the Sentinel," gripes James Russ, the Orlando attor ney who replaced Mello as Spaziano's lead counsel. "And In the Sentinel they found a willing participant." <br /><br />The Herald attacked some of the reports' claims, like the one that said Spaziano had likely killed at least two other bikers in Chicago while he was on the run from Florida police. That case had been closed years ago with- out prosecution but with anoth- er suspect, the Herald reported.<br /><br />And as for the notion that DILisio still fears the Outlaws, "why did he have a listed phone [page end] <br /><br />[page start] from Mello, the attorney.<br /><br />The Sentinel reponded by reporting that Chicago police had reopened their 20-year-old murder case. Holmes, the Herald's expert, is doubtful. "Do they have people out actually interviewing people?" he scoffa, The FDLE report, he says, "offered all kinds of witnesses they did not produce in court. They Just assumed axiomatically the guy was guilty as hell." &nbsp;<br /><br />But there were questions raised about journalism ethics as well. Miller, the Herald editor, had sent a lengthy letter to Chiles in August, pleading for him to meet with Mello's wit- nesses while he mulled Spaziano's bid for clemency. The letter went through Sachs, then the governor's press officer. Sentinel editorials later cited letter to suggest the Herald was in bed with Spaziano's team. <br /><br />But the letter doesn't concern Sachs so much as what he regards as close ties between Miller and Mello at the project's beginning. "I think some stan- dards of journalism were breached," Sachs says. "The roots of the Herald's involvement were not properly planted." <br /><br />Although Halle insists there- was no war, Pancake recalls that a Chicago Tribune reporter enlisted by the Herald for help was quickly called off the case. The Herald is a Knight-Ridder paper, the Tribune is the flagship of the Tribune Co., which owns the Sentinel. (The Chicago writer eventually was listed as a con- tributor to a Sentinel report.)<br /><br />"Reporters and editors involved in both newspapers were not detached, were not objective," contends Sachs. They were determined on a sec- ondary level to prove each other wrong. I think there is gomepro- fessional pride in that, but I also think there is a danger in that kind of case, that maybe a side bar that should be written is nbt assigned because it might defuse the boom."<br /><br />The boom in this case is the new trial for Spaziano, a trial in which evidence is long gone and witnesses, their memories cloud- ed by time, can easily be Impeached. Herald editorials have said that Spaziano likely will remain behind bars for the rest of his life anyway, based on his eariler conviction in the rape of an Orlando teen. <br /><br />But the Heraldla Investigal- Ing the rape trial as well. Among the problems: The young victim failed to pick Spaziano from a lineup at first, and had described her attacker as having red hair and no tattoos: Spaziano has black hair and many tattoos And the main prosecution wit- ness was Tony DILisio. <br /><br />The court ruling gave the Herald its first victory. "The judge said he believed DILisio now," says Haile. "Reasonable people can disagree."<br /><br />But the question of whether justice won is still open. Holmes is convinced that Spaziano was a victim of anti-biker hysteria, which the Sentinel shamelessly renewed in its recent coverage. He says a close reading of the trial transcript leaves only the conclusion that Spaziano didn't get a fair trial. "They don't understand the margin of error in the criminal justice system." he says of the Sentinel, "To assume someone's guilty because they were found guilty is absurd. There is a legal truth and there is an absolute truth. They don't always coincide." <br /><br />Haile would probably agree. Evidence that is good enough for a news story may never stand in court, and Orlando now faces the prospect of Crazy Joe Spaziano, aging biker socialized by 20 years on death row, back on the streets. "It's really frus- trating," Haile says. "Here you have a case that's been lying around for 20 years, and now you're going to have a new trial? Gimme a break. You can't go back and find justice. <br /><br />The Herald's coverage was challenged on several occasions, most abruptly during the hear- ing that preceded Judge Eaton's ruling when its former associate editor, Tony Proscio, was approached by Sentinel reporter Jim Leusner, who asked, "Has the Herald lost its objectivity?"<br /><br />Proscio, who left the Herald this year, subsequently offered an impassioned defense of his paper and its viewpaint. "Does Florida dare-does any decent Society dare-to electrocute a human being based on a trial like the one they gave Joe SpazianD 20 years ago?" he wrote in a Jan. 21 op-ed plece. "And if so, why bother with trials at all?"<br /><br />Not included in Proscio's nar- rative, Sentinel staffers note, was the context: When Leusner asked his question, Proscio had just stepped down from the stand where he had been called to testify in Spaziano's defense. <br /><br />But Proscio's question still holds, and it leads to another, ane regarding the fundamental purpose and duty of the press. If the justice system falls, then what is a newspaper's duty? <br /><br />The danger in today's con- stricting media world comes from the assumption that painstaking objectivity -an excellent business strategy-also makes for excellent journalism. <br /><br />The Spaziano coverage by either the Sentinel or the Herald 10 puts the lie to that theory. Other newspapers can claim to have maintained their objectivity. But they can't claim to have made a difference. Or saved a life. <br /><br />[page end] Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Newspaper Contributor of the Digital Item Person submitting the digital item to the collection. Spage, Wyatt Student Editor of the Digital Item Williams, Megan Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Current Events Subject The topic of the resource Capital punishment Orlando (Fla.)--Maps Journalism False testimony Hypnotism Description An account of the resource The rivalry between two newspapers over the guilt or innocence of Joey Spaziano leads to a new trail, of a case that's over twenty years old. In the end, Justice won over newspaper sales. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ericsson Jr., Edward Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Orlando Weekly Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HIST 298, University of Mary Washington Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996, February, 15-21 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 8 JPGS 300 DPI Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Orlando, Florida https://hist299.umwhistory.org/files/original/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