Dead Wrong: A Death Row Lawyer Speaks Out Against Capital Punishment

Both David Von Drehle and Michael Mello's books are excellent and very well describe what life is like for those on death row and those representing death sentenced persons, particularly at the old CCR [Office of Capital Collateral Representative]. However there is more: After Mark E. Olive voluntarily resigned from CCR about March 1988, Billy H. Nolas became the next Chief Litigator. It is extremely odd that neither Mello nor Von Drehle even mention Nolas nor the next Chief Litigator Martin or Marty J. McClain. For important reasons they should have. Billy H. Nolas is an excellent litigator like Olive. Nolas was the Chief Litigator for the last two years of the Gov. Martinez "regime", which was the most difficult time in CCR history [during my employment there] with Martinez signing death warrants as if he was at a Republican Party event signing autographs. Nolas resigned at the end of 1990, after Martinez had been defeated by former U.S. Senator Lawton Chiles and former U.S. House of Representatives member Buddy MacKay. Nolas was completely drained from the years he endured and litigated while at CCR, due to the huge case load and the internecine warfare within the agency. McClain and his faction within CCR did their best to cause Nolas to leave -- eventually they were successful -- and THAT is when clients' cases began to suffer. Martin J. McClain is an excellent litigator, however his strategic decisions in various cases are questionable. When Mello writes on page 245 of the hardcover version of "Dead Wrong" regarding CCR, "Look beneath the surface of CCR's 'success rates', however, and you'll find an artifice typical of hack public defender officers. CCR has in the past farmed out the hardest cases to outside lawyers (by finding that it has a 'conflict of interest')". The period of time that Mello is referring to is when Martin McClain was the Chief Litigator and Michael Minerva was the executive director of CCR. As the premier example of McClain alleging a "conflict of interest" [and I can only assume with the consent of the director of CCR at the time, Michael Minerva] is the client Jerry Layne Rogers, Sr. -- a wrongfully convicted and innocent man -- Mr. Rogers' case in 1992 consisted of at least 80 boxes of documents, from court files, prosecutor and law enforcement files, trial and evidentiary hearing transcripts, etc. Mr. Rogers' case was the largest and most complicated that CCR has ever represented. The second largest and most complicated was that of Mr. Gerald Stano, whose lead attorney during most of the development of his case was Mark Olive. McClain simply didn't want to have such a complicated case as a CCR case, so McClain, in my considered insider opinion as Mr. Roger's only investigator from 1989 until my involuntary departure in 1992, alleged in a misrepresentation to the Florida Supreme Court (FSC) that he had a "conflict of interest" with Mr. Rogers -- while Mr. Rogers's case was pending at t

Bill Cotterell has been a journalist with UPI and more recently for a good number of years at the Tallahassee Democrat covering primarily state government news in Florida. His email address is [email protected] for verification of this account and a more accurate recounting. He has recounted to me several times about the time in one case that Ms. Holdman said something to the effect that the murdered youth would just have to miss her high school prom --- said in a scarcastic and offensive tone -- meaning minimizing the impact that the murder had upon the murdered youth herself. Michael Mello's "Dead Wrong" quote from page 195 (hardcover version): "There were some days (and nights) when CCR was the best public defender office in the world." I agree -- "some" being the operative word here. For more insight, Michael Moline, formerly of UPI in Tallahassee, wrote a long article for a California newspaper (the name I don't have with me at this time) about Scharlette Holdman shortly after she arrived in California from Florida by means of South Carolina.

For Mello, capital punishment is "government-sponsored homocide." He sees the system as being an "unambiguous disgrace to civilized humanity; besides being classist and indecent, it is racist." I couldn't agree more. And that's why I found this book so compelling to read. Mello places his first-hand analysis of "government-sponsored homocide" in a legal, cultural, philosophical, and ethical context. Though our common sense may say that capital punishment is the best, most justifiable consequence for cold hearted murder, we must use our uncommon sense to see the larger picture.Government-sponsored homocide is not like a crime of murder--even though both seek retribution, but it's a systemic form of murder in which death is seen as a solution to problems in our society and world. As long as we hold to this solution, we'll never be able to understand man's inhumanity to man. We'll simply take the "common sense" route to soloving complex problems with simplistic answers. Many readers will say that Mello is too biased in his analysis. But with well over 3,000 men and women in this country facing a death sentence (nearly 400 in Florida alone), and with a president who resided over 100 death sentences in Texas, we have to think much more critically about what type of country and culture we're livng in and allowing to develop.Reading Mello helps us think about this "anathema to civilization." He does it with passion, insight, and years of committed work. Even though he has stepped down from being a capital public defender, I think his book will be useful to generations to come who can join others to take on anti-death work.

Reviews of this book will do little to prepare you for the reality of reading it. I qualify my star rating because - as its author freely admits - it is often badly written.Mello does not assert that death row is populated by innocents - far from it. He is a man who cares about those sentenced to death and the injustice of their position. This is not the casual professional care of the hack lawyer but the deeply dyed-in-the-wool care of a man who believes the law should deliver on its promises. Mello does not smoulder at the injustice frequently handed out by those paying lipservice to due process. He does not just burn with rage at it. He is incandescent with rage - so much so that he veers towards and teeters on the brink of incoherence at times. His snarling and vitriolic attack on former Justice Lewis Powell is almost a case of the ad hominem attack raised to an artform. Many of his former colleagues at Florida's CCR fare little better than the hapless Powell.This is all the more surprising because his background as an appellate attorney and law professor would suggest that a more measured tone and more orderly development of argument might be expected. His anger does not make for easy reading but the reader who perseveres will be amply rewarded. Mello has two central themes. The first asserts that those sentenced to death are routinely denied the kind of due process envisaged by the spirit of the Bill of Rights. Rather, he says, the deference of federal courts to States's Rights has led to a situation where those accused of capital crimes can expect no more than token observance of procedural due process.His second theme is a painstaking refutation of the complaint that defense lawyers spin out the appeals process to buy time for their clients and thus defeat the ends of justice. He shows how the 10-15 years of appeals which are the norm in capital cases spring primarily from the system's failure to abide by the requirements of due process and its overeagerness to placate public sentiment regardless of the requirements of justice.I suspect that writing this book was a necessary catharsis for Mello. His involvement in capital appeals must have made him feel like Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby - once you get entangled in the system there seems to be no way of escape.

This book won the American Society of Indexers' award for excellence in indexing. The H.W. Wilson Award was presented to the indexer, Laura Moss Gottlieb of Madison WI and to the publisher, University of Wisconsin Press.