Overview

"The author, formerly a death row lawyer in Florida, gives an account of his decision to retire from active work in the American capital punishment system in this book. He presents the cases he worked on - including those of confessed serial killer Ted Bundy and of ""Crazy Joe"" Spaziano, wrongly convicted but still on death row after 20 years. He describes how he and others fought to make the post-conviction system work, ensuring inmates the right to a fair appeal. The legal maze of appeals, death warrants, stays of execution, and executions, are emphasized. Michael Mello refers to the lack of vigilance in a system that punishes guilty and innocent alike. And, practising in Florida, he saw the state's death penalty cost to taxpayers rise to an estimated average US$3.2 million per execution - six times the average cost of life imprisonment. Mello condemns the death penalty as a grotesque waste, one that dishonours victims and their families, exacts formidable costs from government and citizens alike, plays into political agendas, and undermines, warps and demeans the American justice system. Should lawyers of conscience, Mello asks, participate in a system that is dead wrong? Though more prisoners are now on death row in more states than ever before, Mello has made his decision to withdraw his support from the system of the death penalty."

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9780299153403

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Reviews

Mello separates himself from others who have written about death row. He is visceral, not cerebral . . . One of the nation's most passionate post-conviction lawyers. --Colman McCarthy, The Nation <br>

Michael Mello is a poet, a storyteller, a wordsmith, and, thank God, a lawyer. Dead Wrong is an incisive, probing examination of life, death, and the law, at once wickedly funny, heart-wrenchingly human, and surgically precise. This is a book written in blood. Mike Farrell, actor and president of California Death Penalty Focus

"""A blistering, well-annotated critique. . . . both passionate and eloquent.""--Publishers Weekly starred review ""Death-penalty supporters--and opponents, for that matter--who do not read this unique insider's account of capital punishment as a capricious and nearly broken-down system will lay themselves open to the charge that they don't know what they're talking about.""--Kirkus Reviews ""Mello separates himself from others who have written about death row. He is visceral, not cerebral . . . One of the nation's most passionate post-conviction lawyers.""--Colman McCarthy, The Nation ""Michael Mello is a poet, a storyteller, a wordsmith, and, thank God, a lawyer. Dead Wrong is an incisive, probing examination of life, death, and the law, at once wickedly funny, heart-wrenchingly human, and surgically precise. This is a book written in blood.""--Mike Farrell, actor and president of California Death Penalty Focus"

"“A blistering, well-annotated critique. . . . both passionate and eloquent.”—Publishers Weekly starred review “Death-penalty supporters—and opponents, for that matter—who do not read this unique insider’s account of capital punishment as a capricious and nearly broken-down system will lay themselves open to the charge that they don’t know what they’re talking about.”—Kirkus Reviews “Mello separates himself from others who have written about death row. He is visceral, not cerebral . . . One of the nation’s most passionate post-conviction lawyers.”—Colman McCarthy, The Nation ""Michael Mello is a poet, a storyteller, a wordsmith, and, thank God, a lawyer. Dead Wrong is an incisive, probing examination of life, death, and the law, at once wickedly funny, heart-wrenchingly human, and surgically precise. This is a book written in blood.""—Mike Farrell, actor and president of California Death Penalty Focus"

In a season busy with books about the death penalty, here is an idiosyncratic, almost experimental, but authoritative personal critique of the nation's system of capital punishment. Mello is a former postconviction counsel, representing Florida death-row inmates in challenges to their sentence - challenges often popularly thought of as milking the system, as one judge said with reference to Ted Bundy. But Mello relentlessly demonstrates that such procedures generally unfold at a breakneck pace that understaffed counsel can barely keep up with, that delays are often the state's fault - and that the Bundy case's notoriety actually made it a de facto exception to the due-process role. It is astonishing how many cases Mello can cite, from his own experience, of prisoners either executed or nearly executed in flagrantly unconstitutional circumstances due to indifference, incompetence, or outright hostility from the courts, considering that he has performed a mere 14 years of deathwork, as he calls it. However, Mello's often engagingly haphazard way of storytelling virtually ruins the two climactic accounts that introduce his decision to conscientiously abstain from continued work within the system, undermining the hyperbole with which, for example, he excoriates the decisions, regarding his clients, of Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, whom he calls either stupid or malicious. Mello's own aversion to self-censorship also results in repetition; at least one episode that reads rather like score-settling; and an apologia for quitting deathwork startlingly announces that his reasons for doing so are beyond the scope of this book. For all that, death-penalty supporters - and opponents, for that matter - who do not read this unique insider's account of capital punishment as a capricious and nearly broken-down system will lay themselves open to the charge that they don't know what they're talking about. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Michael A. Mello formerly worked full time as a capital public defender in Florida and is now professor of law at Vermont Law School. He is the author of Against the Death Penalty: The Relentless Dissents of Justices Brennan and Marshall.

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