A death penalty mistake
Dublin Core
Title
A death penalty mistake
Subject
Executions--1990-2000
Death penalty
Description
A motorcycle gang member, Joseph Robert Spaziano, is convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of an 18-year old woman. However, new doubts emerge about the crime, and the court proceedings and Spaziano's mental health are called into question. Clemency for Spaziano is called for.
Source
"A death penalty mistake." St. Petersburg Times, June 04, 1995.
Publisher
HIST 298, University of Mary Washington
Date
1995-06-04
Rights
The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source.
Format
1 JPG
300 DPI
Language
English
Coverage
St. Petersburg, FL
Text Item Type Metadata
Text
A death penalty mistake
On June 27, Joseph Robert Spaziano is scheduled to die in Florida’s electric chair.
A powerful case can be made for why he shouldn’t.
Spaziano, as his former attorney describes him, is no boy scout. He was a member of the Outlaws motorcycle gang. He was convicted of raping a 16-year-old and slashing her eyes in 1975. While he was serving a life sentence for that crime, he was indicted and convicted for the murder of Laura Lynn Harberts, an 18-year-old woman whose body was found in a garbage dump.
But the lawyer, Michael Mello, now a law professor in Vermont, also describes Spaziano as a man who is going to be killed by mistakes, the errors of a judicial system that has deemed his case reviewed and therefore, inexplicably, has chosen to ignore a preponderance of reasons casting doubt that he was the murderer. As Mello wrote (see page 1D) in a plea to spare his former client, whom he represented on appeal, “Mr. Spaziano is, I believe in my bone marrow, innocent.”
Give weight to the courts would not:
A jury recommended a life sentence for Spaziano because of the member’s doubt of his guilt. Twice jurors told the judge they could not reach a verdict, and the judge pressured them saying. “do your duty to agree on a verdict, if possible, so this case may be disposed of.” The judge then overrode the jury’s sentence recommendation.
The testimony of the state’s chief witness was based on recall extracted by police hypnosis, a fact not disclosed to jury or judge. The prosecution told the court that if it didn’t have this witness’ testimony. “we’d absolutely have no case here whatsoever.” Too late for Spaziano, the Florida Supreme Court ruled such testimony inadmissible because it is so unreliable.
Two years after the murder, when attention turned toward Spaziano, he had no recall of where he was when the Orlando women disappeared. Although it is not an easy feat for most people to pick a time 24 months prior and re-create a day’s activities, Spaziano has another reason for being short on memory. In 1966 he suffered a severe head injury in a car accident, the variety of which is classically connected to organic personality syndrome.
On the same day he signed Spaziano’s death warrant, Gov. Lawton Chilles said he was uncertain whether he would sign a bill the legislature passed that would reduce the importance of a jury’s sentencing recommendation. Spaziano’s experience should erase any doubt about the bill’s dangerous consequences.
Clemency is the only clear route to justice in the Spaziano case, which Chiles should not let be another tragic example of the death penalty’s tragic flaw. No matter how one feels about capital punishment, no one should be able to bear the thought of executing a person by mistake.
On June 27, Joseph Robert Spaziano is scheduled to die in Florida’s electric chair.
A powerful case can be made for why he shouldn’t.
Spaziano, as his former attorney describes him, is no boy scout. He was a member of the Outlaws motorcycle gang. He was convicted of raping a 16-year-old and slashing her eyes in 1975. While he was serving a life sentence for that crime, he was indicted and convicted for the murder of Laura Lynn Harberts, an 18-year-old woman whose body was found in a garbage dump.
But the lawyer, Michael Mello, now a law professor in Vermont, also describes Spaziano as a man who is going to be killed by mistakes, the errors of a judicial system that has deemed his case reviewed and therefore, inexplicably, has chosen to ignore a preponderance of reasons casting doubt that he was the murderer. As Mello wrote (see page 1D) in a plea to spare his former client, whom he represented on appeal, “Mr. Spaziano is, I believe in my bone marrow, innocent.”
Give weight to the courts would not:
A jury recommended a life sentence for Spaziano because of the member’s doubt of his guilt. Twice jurors told the judge they could not reach a verdict, and the judge pressured them saying. “do your duty to agree on a verdict, if possible, so this case may be disposed of.” The judge then overrode the jury’s sentence recommendation.
The testimony of the state’s chief witness was based on recall extracted by police hypnosis, a fact not disclosed to jury or judge. The prosecution told the court that if it didn’t have this witness’ testimony. “we’d absolutely have no case here whatsoever.” Too late for Spaziano, the Florida Supreme Court ruled such testimony inadmissible because it is so unreliable.
Two years after the murder, when attention turned toward Spaziano, he had no recall of where he was when the Orlando women disappeared. Although it is not an easy feat for most people to pick a time 24 months prior and re-create a day’s activities, Spaziano has another reason for being short on memory. In 1966 he suffered a severe head injury in a car accident, the variety of which is classically connected to organic personality syndrome.
On the same day he signed Spaziano’s death warrant, Gov. Lawton Chilles said he was uncertain whether he would sign a bill the legislature passed that would reduce the importance of a jury’s sentencing recommendation. Spaziano’s experience should erase any doubt about the bill’s dangerous consequences.
Clemency is the only clear route to justice in the Spaziano case, which Chiles should not let be another tragic example of the death penalty’s tragic flaw. No matter how one feels about capital punishment, no one should be able to bear the thought of executing a person by mistake.
Original Format
Newspaper
Contributor of the Digital Item
Gaddie, Jason
Student Editor of the Digital Item
Dickinson, Terra
Files
Citation
“A death penalty mistake,” HIST299, accessed March 12, 2026, https://hist299.umwhistory.org/items/show/166.