A phony trial and a crucial issue: Justice
Dublin Core
Title
A phony trial and a crucial issue: Justice
Subject
False testimony
Witnesses
Description
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
Proscio, Tony
Source
Proscio, Tony. "A phony trial and a crucial issue: Justice."
Miami Herald, January 21, 1996, C1.
Miami Herald, January 21, 1996, C1.
Publisher
HIST 298, University of Mary Washington
Date
1996-01-21
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
2 JPGs
300DPI
Language
English
Coverage
Miami, FL
Text Item Type Metadata
Text
[title] A phony trial and a crucial issue: Justice
[author] By Tony Proscio
If you didn't know the players, you might have mistaken this for a romantic morality play: The tale of the Penitent Liar racing to the gallows to rescue the wrongly Convicted Man, just as the Crusading Lawyer lunges to stay the executioner's upraised hand.
Great stuff. Standing room only. Free hankies with every performance.
Trouble is, history is a lousy screenwriter. The case of the State of Florida vs. Joseph Spaziano-- the 20-year-old murder trial under examination in a Seminole County courtroom-- has all the makings of a first-rate tearjerker.
The man about to be executed could well be innocent. The testimony that put him on death row is almost certainly false. And his "trial" was a mockery of the Constitution. It's an alarming story of American justice. But as a box-office blockbuster, it's got one giant problem:
The cast stinks.
The Wrongly Condemned Man. "Crazy Joe" Spaziano, is no Tom Hanks. He's a tough, scary-looking biker with a monster rap sheet and enough enemies (including several members of his own family) to overflow a medium-sized courtroom.
The False-but-Penitent Witness isn't Brad Pitt, all doe-eyed remorse and misguided innocence. He's Tony DiLisio, a fast-talking former acidhead who seems to live permanently on the edge of hysteria. Twenty years ago, as a drugged-out teenager, he succumbed to police entreaties and two sessions of shamelessly suggestive hypnosis to accuse Spaziano, a former buddy, of torture and murder. A born-again Christian, he now admits that he was lying when his hand first rested on the Bible. Still, after days of anguished deliberation, a jury reluctantly believed his fabrication, and Spaziano headed for the electric chair.
And the original Crusading Lawyer is no Jimmy Stewart. He's an angry ideologue who writes legal briefs that read like temper tantrums, a guy who insists on referring to his adversaries (including federal appellate judges) by the unprintable names of private body parts.
These are not people you're likely to fall in love with. No one is going to become engrossed in this story for its glamour. In fact, many people seem to have missed the point of it entirely, apparently because it consists largely of small-town grotesques with often dark, imponderable motives.
All of this may explain how surprised I was when Jim Leusner, a reporter for The Orlando Sentinel, approached me last week outside Judge O.H. Eaton Jr.'s courtroom in Seminole County, during a break in the Spaziano hearing. to ask me this remarkable question:
"Has The Herald lost its objectivity on this story?"
Huh? Lost its objectivity? For what? Because its reporters and editors were somehow enthralled by the allure of these magnetic personalities? Entranced by their Gandhi-like serenity? Blinded by their charm?
What element of this story, I wanted to ask him, would have caused The Herald suddenly to shed its principles? No matter how little one might think of this newspaper--and I happen to think quite highly of it-- what possible motive could there be for casting ethics aside in this of all cases?
What he meant, I suppose, is that Lori Rozsa, The Herald's lead reporter on this story, was the first journalist to pierce through to DiLisio's conscience and hear him admit his 20-year-old lie. On June 9, Rozsa went to DiLisio's Pensacola home seeking his view of his flimsy 1975 testimony. After getting the door slammed in her face, she used the salesman's classic stratagem she thrust her foot past the doorjamb. DiLisio soon gave in and finally told her what he previously had told only his pastor. He lied and had sent a man to probable death.
That was dramatic (and top-notch) reporting. It demonstrated Rozsa's skill and determination. It yielded a Page One story. What it did not do is alter The Herald's interest in the case of Florida vs Spaziano.
Well before Rozsa ever went to Pensacola--in fact, before her editor was even convinced that it was worth the trip--The Herald already had prepared an editorial saying that Spaziano's trial was a hopelessly
[image-Proscio] [image caption- Tony Proscio was the Herald's associate editor from 1992-95. Now New York City's deputy commissioner of homeless services he wrote this article for the Herald] [end of Page one]
[beginning of Page two] deficient basis for executing him.
Why? Because we had read the transcripts of the trial and of DiLisio's abracadabra "hypnosis." Because we looked for corroboration, physical evidence, convincing testimony, and found absolutely none. Before the witness had recanted anything, before any Herald reporter had met him or even contemplated meeting him, keen observers of the legal system inside and outside the paper already had smelled the constitutional stench of a shamefully bad trial.
The Florida Supreme Court, intrigued by DiLisio's recantation and Rozsa's reporting, eventually ordered the current hearing. As a result, Judge Eaton is expected to decide today or sometime very soon whether he believes what DiLisio says today, or what he said 20 years ago.
Yet in all this high legal drama, the heart and soul of this horrendous matter seems to have been lost. Namely: The case against Spaziano smelled to high heaven before The Herald ran the first story on it. It was a phony prosecution, based on a single witness with a disastrous drug habit, several clear motives to lie, a story that took weeks (and two sessions of hypnotic suggestion) to concoct and a number of assertions that contradicted the known evidence.
Were there two bodies or one? Were they side-by-side or piled one atop the other? Were they both young, or was one of them noticeably elderly? Were they covered or in plain view? Were they in a dump or an orange grove? Did Spaziano boast of murdering them or merely hint of committing other, similar murders? All of that depends on when the teenage DiLisio was talking, and to whom. Yet the whole prosecution of Joe Spaziano rested on this one troubled kid's twisted, incredible tale.
Don't believe me. Believe the state's prosecutor at trial: "If you don't believe Tony DiLisio," he told the jury then, "the only possible verdict was not guilty." Eventually jurors reached the wrong conclusion. But don't blame them: No one ever told them about the hypnosis or the contradictions.
Whether to believe Tony DiLisio is a crucial issue, but it's not the fundamental issue. The fundamental issue has nothing to do with DiLisio, or with Lori Rozsa, or with The Herald. It has to do with the electric chair, with justice and with this simple question:
Does Florida dare -- does any decent society dare-- to electrocute a human being based on a trial like the one they gave Joe Spaziano 20 years ago? And if so, why bother with trials at all?
That's what I should have said to Sentinel reporter Jim Leusner. Sometimes, though, the truest things don't come to your mind right away. Sometimes, you have to think things through awhile to get them right. Sometimes, the truth can take 20 years to tell.
[image-Rozsa] [image caption- Rozsa]
[end of Page two]
[author] By Tony Proscio
If you didn't know the players, you might have mistaken this for a romantic morality play: The tale of the Penitent Liar racing to the gallows to rescue the wrongly Convicted Man, just as the Crusading Lawyer lunges to stay the executioner's upraised hand.
Great stuff. Standing room only. Free hankies with every performance.
Trouble is, history is a lousy screenwriter. The case of the State of Florida vs. Joseph Spaziano-- the 20-year-old murder trial under examination in a Seminole County courtroom-- has all the makings of a first-rate tearjerker.
The man about to be executed could well be innocent. The testimony that put him on death row is almost certainly false. And his "trial" was a mockery of the Constitution. It's an alarming story of American justice. But as a box-office blockbuster, it's got one giant problem:
The cast stinks.
The Wrongly Condemned Man. "Crazy Joe" Spaziano, is no Tom Hanks. He's a tough, scary-looking biker with a monster rap sheet and enough enemies (including several members of his own family) to overflow a medium-sized courtroom.
The False-but-Penitent Witness isn't Brad Pitt, all doe-eyed remorse and misguided innocence. He's Tony DiLisio, a fast-talking former acidhead who seems to live permanently on the edge of hysteria. Twenty years ago, as a drugged-out teenager, he succumbed to police entreaties and two sessions of shamelessly suggestive hypnosis to accuse Spaziano, a former buddy, of torture and murder. A born-again Christian, he now admits that he was lying when his hand first rested on the Bible. Still, after days of anguished deliberation, a jury reluctantly believed his fabrication, and Spaziano headed for the electric chair.
And the original Crusading Lawyer is no Jimmy Stewart. He's an angry ideologue who writes legal briefs that read like temper tantrums, a guy who insists on referring to his adversaries (including federal appellate judges) by the unprintable names of private body parts.
These are not people you're likely to fall in love with. No one is going to become engrossed in this story for its glamour. In fact, many people seem to have missed the point of it entirely, apparently because it consists largely of small-town grotesques with often dark, imponderable motives.
All of this may explain how surprised I was when Jim Leusner, a reporter for The Orlando Sentinel, approached me last week outside Judge O.H. Eaton Jr.'s courtroom in Seminole County, during a break in the Spaziano hearing. to ask me this remarkable question:
"Has The Herald lost its objectivity on this story?"
Huh? Lost its objectivity? For what? Because its reporters and editors were somehow enthralled by the allure of these magnetic personalities? Entranced by their Gandhi-like serenity? Blinded by their charm?
What element of this story, I wanted to ask him, would have caused The Herald suddenly to shed its principles? No matter how little one might think of this newspaper--and I happen to think quite highly of it-- what possible motive could there be for casting ethics aside in this of all cases?
What he meant, I suppose, is that Lori Rozsa, The Herald's lead reporter on this story, was the first journalist to pierce through to DiLisio's conscience and hear him admit his 20-year-old lie. On June 9, Rozsa went to DiLisio's Pensacola home seeking his view of his flimsy 1975 testimony. After getting the door slammed in her face, she used the salesman's classic stratagem she thrust her foot past the doorjamb. DiLisio soon gave in and finally told her what he previously had told only his pastor. He lied and had sent a man to probable death.
That was dramatic (and top-notch) reporting. It demonstrated Rozsa's skill and determination. It yielded a Page One story. What it did not do is alter The Herald's interest in the case of Florida vs Spaziano.
Well before Rozsa ever went to Pensacola--in fact, before her editor was even convinced that it was worth the trip--The Herald already had prepared an editorial saying that Spaziano's trial was a hopelessly
[image-Proscio] [image caption- Tony Proscio was the Herald's associate editor from 1992-95. Now New York City's deputy commissioner of homeless services he wrote this article for the Herald] [end of Page one]
[beginning of Page two] deficient basis for executing him.
Why? Because we had read the transcripts of the trial and of DiLisio's abracadabra "hypnosis." Because we looked for corroboration, physical evidence, convincing testimony, and found absolutely none. Before the witness had recanted anything, before any Herald reporter had met him or even contemplated meeting him, keen observers of the legal system inside and outside the paper already had smelled the constitutional stench of a shamefully bad trial.
The Florida Supreme Court, intrigued by DiLisio's recantation and Rozsa's reporting, eventually ordered the current hearing. As a result, Judge Eaton is expected to decide today or sometime very soon whether he believes what DiLisio says today, or what he said 20 years ago.
Yet in all this high legal drama, the heart and soul of this horrendous matter seems to have been lost. Namely: The case against Spaziano smelled to high heaven before The Herald ran the first story on it. It was a phony prosecution, based on a single witness with a disastrous drug habit, several clear motives to lie, a story that took weeks (and two sessions of hypnotic suggestion) to concoct and a number of assertions that contradicted the known evidence.
Were there two bodies or one? Were they side-by-side or piled one atop the other? Were they both young, or was one of them noticeably elderly? Were they covered or in plain view? Were they in a dump or an orange grove? Did Spaziano boast of murdering them or merely hint of committing other, similar murders? All of that depends on when the teenage DiLisio was talking, and to whom. Yet the whole prosecution of Joe Spaziano rested on this one troubled kid's twisted, incredible tale.
Don't believe me. Believe the state's prosecutor at trial: "If you don't believe Tony DiLisio," he told the jury then, "the only possible verdict was not guilty." Eventually jurors reached the wrong conclusion. But don't blame them: No one ever told them about the hypnosis or the contradictions.
Whether to believe Tony DiLisio is a crucial issue, but it's not the fundamental issue. The fundamental issue has nothing to do with DiLisio, or with Lori Rozsa, or with The Herald. It has to do with the electric chair, with justice and with this simple question:
Does Florida dare -- does any decent society dare-- to electrocute a human being based on a trial like the one they gave Joe Spaziano 20 years ago? And if so, why bother with trials at all?
That's what I should have said to Sentinel reporter Jim Leusner. Sometimes, though, the truest things don't come to your mind right away. Sometimes, you have to think things through awhile to get them right. Sometimes, the truth can take 20 years to tell.
[image-Rozsa] [image caption- Rozsa]
[end of Page two]
Original Format
Newspaper
Contributor of the Digital Item
Nameroff, Griffin
Student Editor of the Digital Item
Williams, Megan
Files
Citation
Proscio, Tony, “A phony trial and a crucial issue: Justice,” HIST299, accessed March 12, 2026, https://hist299.umwhistory.org/items/show/246.