Professor Aids Kaczynski's Defense
Dublin Core
Title
Professor Aids Kaczynski's Defense
Subject
Capital punishment
Bombs
Description
This article discusses Michael Mello's opinion on using Kaczynski's personal diary as evidence against him in a court of law.
Creator
Pollak, Sally
Source
Pollak, Sally. "Professor aids Kaczynski's defense". The Burlington Free Press. Monday, December 8, 1997.
Publisher
HIST 298, University of Mary Washington
Date
1997-12-08
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
3 JPGs
300 DPI
Language
English
Coverage
Burlington, VT
Text Item Type Metadata
Text
Professor aids Kaczynski’s defense
Man consults on admissibility of diary in Unabomber case
Michael Mello, a professor at Vermont Law School whose mentor and “professional father” was killed by a mail bomb, is advising the defense of Ted Kaczynski, the alleged Unabomber on trial for mailing a series of deadly bombs.
Mello’s advice centers on the admissibility of Kaczynski’s journals, which the prosecution has said “are the backbone of the government’s case.” Mello, who keeps a diary, contends a person’s diary should be afforded the same constitutional protection against self-incrimination as his spoken words – protection that is guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.
Since early May, Mello has had a half-dozen phone calls with Judy Clarke, Kaczynski’s lead lawyer. The prosecution in the trial in Sacramento, Calif., is seeking the death penalty. Although the prosecution won an early round on Kaczynski’s diary, Mello expects his argument to prevail.
“My diary is an extension of my own mind and my own soul and my own heart,” Mello said. “And the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States says the government can’t extract information from my mind, my heart and my soul. That’s what the prohibition against compelled self-incrimination means.”
[image- man in library] Michael Mello is a law professor at Vermont Law School in South Royalton. He is advising the defense of Ted Kaczynski, the alleged Unabomber on trial for mailing deadly bombs.
Mello’s ‘nightmare’
For Mello, 40, who has taught at Vermont Law School since 1988, the case resonated personally and professionally for several reasons:
He spent four years defending death row inmates in Florida, attempting 11th-hour appellate maneuverings to spare their lives. Mello continued to represent death row clients while teaching at Vermont Law School.
He had kept a diary since 1982, when he clerked for his mentor, U.S. Appeals Court Judge Robert S. Vance, because he realized he was “living through the fundamental experience of my life.” The Birmingham, Ala., judge was killed in 1989 by a bomb sent to his home.
“I have a real special place in my heart, a special fear and loathing, for people who commit murder by sending bombs through the U.S. mail,” Mello said. “I have no sympathy whatsoever for the Unabomber. . . . If he ends up winning in the appellate court based on the diary stuff, I will
Mello file
Name: Michael A. Mello
Home: Wilder
Age: 40
Profession: Professor of constitutional and criminal law at Vermont Law School
Family: Wife, Deanna
Recent Book: “Dead Wrong: A Death Row Lawyer Speaks Out Against Capital Punishment” (University of Wisconsin Press, $27.95)
have very mixed feelings about that.”
The man convicted of killing Vance, Walter Leroy Moody, was sentenced last year to death. He also kept a diary, and the very pieces of the Kaczynski defense that Mello is helping to design could be used to save this man who killed one of the most important persons in Mello’s life.
Mello’s “nightmare” is that his diary argument will be used to win Moody a new trial, and that at the trial, he’ll be acquitted.
But as a legal scholar whose professional practice centered on capital cases, he feels he must answer compelling constitutional questions in death-penalty cases. It is the reason he is consulting on the Kaczynski case, and the reason he and third-year law student Paul Perkins wrote a 74-page law review article on the Kaczynski diary. It will be published in the January issue of the Vermont Law Review.
“It was a law review article waiting to be written, screaming to be written,” Mello said. “The Kaczynski case is a law professor’s classroom hypothetical gone mad.”
The final pages of the article are Mello’s alone, an epilogue about his work in Vance’s courtroom and his admiration for the judge.
“He was as close to a professional father as I’ve ever had,” Mello said. “I loved him.”
Eight years after Vance’s murder, his death makes Mello cry. He thinks about Vance, an opponent of Gov. George Wallace and a civil rights activist, all the time. The cruel irony, Mello said, is that Vance survived the front lines of the civil rights battle, yet more than two decades later was violently killed in his own home.
“By 1989, we all thought he was safe,” said Mello, who was so devastated by the killing he couldn’t go to the funeral.
“I bought the ticket,” Mello said. “I couldn’t make myself get on the plane.”
Mello clerked for Vance after graduating in 1982 from the University of Virginia Law School. He spent the bulk of his clerkship working on death-penalty cases on appeal from Alabama state courts. Though Vance was personally opposed to the death penalty, he was bound by law to uphold it.
“We argued very bitterly and very loudly about death penalty cases,” Mello said. The experience led Mello to his work in Florida, where he spent five years as an advocate for death row inmates in the Public Defender’s Office. “I left there thinking I’ll pay penance for a year,” Mello said. “Once I got into doing the work full time, it was impossible to leave until I felt it was eating me up. It was consuming me.”
Of about 70 cases Mello worked closely on in Florida, six ended in executions in an electric chair built in 1923. A defense lawyer was always in attendance at the executions, in part because a small percentage are botched. Though the front-line lawyers tended to know the inmates and their families best, it was decided an administrator would attend the executions.
“We were afraid that if any of us witnessed an execution it would be so emotionally annihilating to us that we wouldn’t be able to function,” Mello said. “That was my rationale. As much as anything else, it was just simple cowardice.”
Final talks
Mello, who has written a book about his work in Florida, “Dead Wrong,” also believed he was not the appropriate person for final conversations with a man facing death. He was advocating on the inmate’s behalf until the very last moment. “What they need to be doing is preparing themselves to be killed," he said.
In California, the diary argument has yet to yield the results Mello hoped for: U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell, who is trying the Kaczynski case, ruled in pretrial motions the journals are admissible. Mello claims he is not fazed by the decision.
“It’s a winner in the 9th Circuit (Court of Appeals), and I believe it’s a winner in the Supreme Court as well,” Mello said. “What he’s (Burrell) done is handed the defense a nuclear bomb of an appellate issue. He has essentially issued Ted Kaczynski, accused Unabomber, an insurance policy.”
Man consults on admissibility of diary in Unabomber case
Michael Mello, a professor at Vermont Law School whose mentor and “professional father” was killed by a mail bomb, is advising the defense of Ted Kaczynski, the alleged Unabomber on trial for mailing a series of deadly bombs.
Mello’s advice centers on the admissibility of Kaczynski’s journals, which the prosecution has said “are the backbone of the government’s case.” Mello, who keeps a diary, contends a person’s diary should be afforded the same constitutional protection against self-incrimination as his spoken words – protection that is guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.
Since early May, Mello has had a half-dozen phone calls with Judy Clarke, Kaczynski’s lead lawyer. The prosecution in the trial in Sacramento, Calif., is seeking the death penalty. Although the prosecution won an early round on Kaczynski’s diary, Mello expects his argument to prevail.
“My diary is an extension of my own mind and my own soul and my own heart,” Mello said. “And the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States says the government can’t extract information from my mind, my heart and my soul. That’s what the prohibition against compelled self-incrimination means.”
[image- man in library] Michael Mello is a law professor at Vermont Law School in South Royalton. He is advising the defense of Ted Kaczynski, the alleged Unabomber on trial for mailing deadly bombs.
Mello’s ‘nightmare’
For Mello, 40, who has taught at Vermont Law School since 1988, the case resonated personally and professionally for several reasons:
He spent four years defending death row inmates in Florida, attempting 11th-hour appellate maneuverings to spare their lives. Mello continued to represent death row clients while teaching at Vermont Law School.
He had kept a diary since 1982, when he clerked for his mentor, U.S. Appeals Court Judge Robert S. Vance, because he realized he was “living through the fundamental experience of my life.” The Birmingham, Ala., judge was killed in 1989 by a bomb sent to his home.
“I have a real special place in my heart, a special fear and loathing, for people who commit murder by sending bombs through the U.S. mail,” Mello said. “I have no sympathy whatsoever for the Unabomber. . . . If he ends up winning in the appellate court based on the diary stuff, I will
Mello file
Name: Michael A. Mello
Home: Wilder
Age: 40
Profession: Professor of constitutional and criminal law at Vermont Law School
Family: Wife, Deanna
Recent Book: “Dead Wrong: A Death Row Lawyer Speaks Out Against Capital Punishment” (University of Wisconsin Press, $27.95)
have very mixed feelings about that.”
The man convicted of killing Vance, Walter Leroy Moody, was sentenced last year to death. He also kept a diary, and the very pieces of the Kaczynski defense that Mello is helping to design could be used to save this man who killed one of the most important persons in Mello’s life.
Mello’s “nightmare” is that his diary argument will be used to win Moody a new trial, and that at the trial, he’ll be acquitted.
But as a legal scholar whose professional practice centered on capital cases, he feels he must answer compelling constitutional questions in death-penalty cases. It is the reason he is consulting on the Kaczynski case, and the reason he and third-year law student Paul Perkins wrote a 74-page law review article on the Kaczynski diary. It will be published in the January issue of the Vermont Law Review.
“It was a law review article waiting to be written, screaming to be written,” Mello said. “The Kaczynski case is a law professor’s classroom hypothetical gone mad.”
The final pages of the article are Mello’s alone, an epilogue about his work in Vance’s courtroom and his admiration for the judge.
“He was as close to a professional father as I’ve ever had,” Mello said. “I loved him.”
Eight years after Vance’s murder, his death makes Mello cry. He thinks about Vance, an opponent of Gov. George Wallace and a civil rights activist, all the time. The cruel irony, Mello said, is that Vance survived the front lines of the civil rights battle, yet more than two decades later was violently killed in his own home.
“By 1989, we all thought he was safe,” said Mello, who was so devastated by the killing he couldn’t go to the funeral.
“I bought the ticket,” Mello said. “I couldn’t make myself get on the plane.”
Mello clerked for Vance after graduating in 1982 from the University of Virginia Law School. He spent the bulk of his clerkship working on death-penalty cases on appeal from Alabama state courts. Though Vance was personally opposed to the death penalty, he was bound by law to uphold it.
“We argued very bitterly and very loudly about death penalty cases,” Mello said. The experience led Mello to his work in Florida, where he spent five years as an advocate for death row inmates in the Public Defender’s Office. “I left there thinking I’ll pay penance for a year,” Mello said. “Once I got into doing the work full time, it was impossible to leave until I felt it was eating me up. It was consuming me.”
Of about 70 cases Mello worked closely on in Florida, six ended in executions in an electric chair built in 1923. A defense lawyer was always in attendance at the executions, in part because a small percentage are botched. Though the front-line lawyers tended to know the inmates and their families best, it was decided an administrator would attend the executions.
“We were afraid that if any of us witnessed an execution it would be so emotionally annihilating to us that we wouldn’t be able to function,” Mello said. “That was my rationale. As much as anything else, it was just simple cowardice.”
Final talks
Mello, who has written a book about his work in Florida, “Dead Wrong,” also believed he was not the appropriate person for final conversations with a man facing death. He was advocating on the inmate’s behalf until the very last moment. “What they need to be doing is preparing themselves to be killed," he said.
In California, the diary argument has yet to yield the results Mello hoped for: U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell, who is trying the Kaczynski case, ruled in pretrial motions the journals are admissible. Mello claims he is not fazed by the decision.
“It’s a winner in the 9th Circuit (Court of Appeals), and I believe it’s a winner in the Supreme Court as well,” Mello said. “What he’s (Burrell) done is handed the defense a nuclear bomb of an appellate issue. He has essentially issued Ted Kaczynski, accused Unabomber, an insurance policy.”
Original Format
Newspaper article
Contributor of the Digital Item
Phillips, Lauren
Student Editor of the Digital Item
Van Doren, Jamie
Files
Citation
Pollak, Sally, “Professor Aids Kaczynski's Defense,” HIST299, accessed May 17, 2025, https://hist299.umwhistory.org/items/show/287.