Fired For Saving His Client's Life
Dublin Core
Title
Fired For Saving His Client's Life
Subject
Capital punishment
Spaziano, Joe
Description
Michael Mello is fired for trying to save Joseph Spaziano's life.
Creator
Parloff, Roger
Source
Parloff, Roger. “Fired For Saving His Client's Life.” The American Lawyer, April, 1996, 19.
Publisher
HIST 298, University of Mary Washington
Date
1996-04
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
Text Item Type Metadata
Text
[Start of Article]
[Heading]
Fired For Saving His Client's Life
[Start of Column One]
"IF THIS COURT INtends to kill this innocent man by depriving him of the effective assistance of counsel," pro bono counsel Michael Mello wrote the Florida Supreme Court last September 8, "then it will do so without my complicity. I will not participate in a sham evidentiary 'hearing.'"
To stop the machinery of death from claiming his client, Mello threw himself in the gears. By refusing to show up for a hearing for which he had been given less than a week to prepare---and highlighting that, in his opinion, his client was being denied effective assistance of counsel---he shamed the court into granting a stay of execution and time to prepare properly.
For years the eccentric Mello now a professor at Vermont Law School ["When Worlds Collide," June 1995], had written in pleadings, law review articles, and newspaper editorials that his death row client, Joseph "Crazy Joe" Spaziano, was innocent. Mello's writings were always passionate, always verbose, occasionally offensive, and never successful.
Spaziano, a member of an Orlando motorcycle gang, was
[End of Column One]
[Start of Column Two]
convicted in January 1976 of brutally murdering Laura Harberts, an 18-year-old hospital clerk, who disappeared on August 5, 1973, and whose skeletal remains were discovered in a garbage dump 16 days later.
While the case raised numerous perplexing legal issues, the most disturbing was that---unbeknownst to the jury---the testimony of the key prosecution witness, a troubled teenage drug addict named Anthony DiLisio, consisted almost entirely of hypnotically recovered memories. Although the state supreme court letter decided that hypnotically induced testimony was so unreliable as to be inadmissible per se, both that court and the federal courts refused to upset Spaziano's conviction, since his trial lawyer had never objected to DiLisio's testimony on those grounds. Indeed, his trial lawyer chose not to let the jury know that DiLisio's testimony was hypnotically induced, fearing that the jury might give it undue credence if it knew.
While Spaziano's fourth execution warrant was pending in June 1995, DiLisio, now a born-again Christian, recanted his testimony. Governor Law-
[End of Column Two]
[Start of Column Three]
ton Chiles briefly stayed Spaziano's execution to investigate the recantation, but in late August he issued a fifth warrant, claiming that a report by state investigators---which Chilies refused to make public---established that the recantation was false. Spaziano was to die September 21.
On September 8 Mello went to the Florida Supreme Court seeking a stay of execution and an evidentiary hearing concerning the recantation.
The Court granted the hearing, but refused to order a stay of execution. Instead, by a 4-to-3 vote, the court ordered Mello, an appellate lawyer with very little trial experience, no associates, and no investigator, to handle an evidentiary hearing one week later, on September 15. The court also ordered the state's Office of the Capital Collateral Representative (CCR)---a public defender's office devoted to capital post-conviction appeals---to assist Mello.
Mello refused to comply.
"We would have thrown a hearing together," he says, "put on enough evidence so that [the justices could say], 'Yeah, you had your hearing,' we would
[End of Column Three]
[Start of Column Four]
[Image: Photograph of Michael Mello]
have lost, the [trial-level] judge would have made killer fact-findings against us, and . . . Joe would have been dead on time and as scheduled."
In a handwritten fax sent from his motel to the supreme court on the night of September 8, Mello just said no. He wrote, among other things, that he and CCR could not provide competent assistance with just six days' preparation. Mello also pledged that he would not surrender his 25 boxes of case files to CCR or to any other attorney in time for the hearing. "If you are going to kill an innocent man without a lawyer," he wrote, "you will do so in such a way that the whole world will see what you are doing. . . . I will not be your mask."
[End of Column Four]
[Start of Column Five]
The high court blinked. On September 12 it threw Mello off the case, but granted Spaziano a stay. Then, in January, after new pro bono attorneys at 470-lawyer Holland & Knight took over the case---and the supreme court allowed them almost three months to prepare---circuit judge O.H. Eaton, Jr., of Sanford, Florida, overturned Spaziano's conviction and granted a new trial.
"Mike Mello's responsible for Joe Spaziano's life," says H&K partner Gregg Thomas, who handled the hearing with his partner Stephen Hanlon and Orlando-based criminal specialist James Russ, Holland & Knight donated about $400,000 in lawyer time and $70,000 in costs to handle the hearing, Thomas estimates, not counting Russ's time.
The state has appealed Judge Eaton's ruling to the Florida supreme court.
Meanwhile, Spaziano is still serving life for the 1974 rape and battery of a 16-year-old girl. Mello believes Spaziano is innocent of that charge as well. But, as Mello says, "That's another story."
---Roger Parloff
[End of Column Five]
The American Lawyer April 1996.19
[End of Article]
[Heading]
Fired For Saving His Client's Life
[Start of Column One]
"IF THIS COURT INtends to kill this innocent man by depriving him of the effective assistance of counsel," pro bono counsel Michael Mello wrote the Florida Supreme Court last September 8, "then it will do so without my complicity. I will not participate in a sham evidentiary 'hearing.'"
To stop the machinery of death from claiming his client, Mello threw himself in the gears. By refusing to show up for a hearing for which he had been given less than a week to prepare---and highlighting that, in his opinion, his client was being denied effective assistance of counsel---he shamed the court into granting a stay of execution and time to prepare properly.
For years the eccentric Mello now a professor at Vermont Law School ["When Worlds Collide," June 1995], had written in pleadings, law review articles, and newspaper editorials that his death row client, Joseph "Crazy Joe" Spaziano, was innocent. Mello's writings were always passionate, always verbose, occasionally offensive, and never successful.
Spaziano, a member of an Orlando motorcycle gang, was
[End of Column One]
[Start of Column Two]
convicted in January 1976 of brutally murdering Laura Harberts, an 18-year-old hospital clerk, who disappeared on August 5, 1973, and whose skeletal remains were discovered in a garbage dump 16 days later.
While the case raised numerous perplexing legal issues, the most disturbing was that---unbeknownst to the jury---the testimony of the key prosecution witness, a troubled teenage drug addict named Anthony DiLisio, consisted almost entirely of hypnotically recovered memories. Although the state supreme court letter decided that hypnotically induced testimony was so unreliable as to be inadmissible per se, both that court and the federal courts refused to upset Spaziano's conviction, since his trial lawyer had never objected to DiLisio's testimony on those grounds. Indeed, his trial lawyer chose not to let the jury know that DiLisio's testimony was hypnotically induced, fearing that the jury might give it undue credence if it knew.
While Spaziano's fourth execution warrant was pending in June 1995, DiLisio, now a born-again Christian, recanted his testimony. Governor Law-
[End of Column Two]
[Start of Column Three]
ton Chiles briefly stayed Spaziano's execution to investigate the recantation, but in late August he issued a fifth warrant, claiming that a report by state investigators---which Chilies refused to make public---established that the recantation was false. Spaziano was to die September 21.
On September 8 Mello went to the Florida Supreme Court seeking a stay of execution and an evidentiary hearing concerning the recantation.
The Court granted the hearing, but refused to order a stay of execution. Instead, by a 4-to-3 vote, the court ordered Mello, an appellate lawyer with very little trial experience, no associates, and no investigator, to handle an evidentiary hearing one week later, on September 15. The court also ordered the state's Office of the Capital Collateral Representative (CCR)---a public defender's office devoted to capital post-conviction appeals---to assist Mello.
Mello refused to comply.
"We would have thrown a hearing together," he says, "put on enough evidence so that [the justices could say], 'Yeah, you had your hearing,' we would
[End of Column Three]
[Start of Column Four]
[Image: Photograph of Michael Mello]
have lost, the [trial-level] judge would have made killer fact-findings against us, and . . . Joe would have been dead on time and as scheduled."
In a handwritten fax sent from his motel to the supreme court on the night of September 8, Mello just said no. He wrote, among other things, that he and CCR could not provide competent assistance with just six days' preparation. Mello also pledged that he would not surrender his 25 boxes of case files to CCR or to any other attorney in time for the hearing. "If you are going to kill an innocent man without a lawyer," he wrote, "you will do so in such a way that the whole world will see what you are doing. . . . I will not be your mask."
[End of Column Four]
[Start of Column Five]
The high court blinked. On September 12 it threw Mello off the case, but granted Spaziano a stay. Then, in January, after new pro bono attorneys at 470-lawyer Holland & Knight took over the case---and the supreme court allowed them almost three months to prepare---circuit judge O.H. Eaton, Jr., of Sanford, Florida, overturned Spaziano's conviction and granted a new trial.
"Mike Mello's responsible for Joe Spaziano's life," says H&K partner Gregg Thomas, who handled the hearing with his partner Stephen Hanlon and Orlando-based criminal specialist James Russ, Holland & Knight donated about $400,000 in lawyer time and $70,000 in costs to handle the hearing, Thomas estimates, not counting Russ's time.
The state has appealed Judge Eaton's ruling to the Florida supreme court.
Meanwhile, Spaziano is still serving life for the 1974 rape and battery of a 16-year-old girl. Mello believes Spaziano is innocent of that charge as well. But, as Mello says, "That's another story."
---Roger Parloff
[End of Column Five]
The American Lawyer April 1996.19
[End of Article]
Original Format
Format: Magazine
Contributor of the Digital Item
Schroeder, Audrey
Student Editor of the Digital Item
Williams, Megan
Files
Citation
Parloff, Roger, “Fired For Saving His Client's Life,” HIST299, accessed July 12, 2026, https://hist299.umwhistory.org/items/show/255.