The author, a law professor and critic of capital punishment, describes the events associated with his client "Crazy Joe" Spaziano, including how he was wrongly accused, convicted, and sentenced to death.

The Wrong Man: A True Story of Innocence on Death Row

Biographies & Memoirs

Mello, Michael

Arts & Literature

Univ. of Minnesota Press

Legal cases are stories, and some of the most compelling -- and the most disturbing -- are those that take place on death row: the innocent man executed, juveniles and the mentally ill condemned to die, a smoking electric chair, a napping defense attorney, a senile hit man. These are the stories in which Michael Mello, as a capital public defender, played a crucial role, and they are the cases that make up Deathwork, a moment-by-moment, behind-the-scenes look at the life and work of a death row lawyer and his clients.Part memoir, part legal casebook, Deathwork offers a gritty, often anguishing picture of what Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun called the American legal "machinery of death." The stories Mello tells raise questions about legal issues -- from prosecutorial misconduct to the racial inequities of sentencing, from the rules of evidence to the rights of the mentally ill -- that here take on a life-and-death urgency. They describe in detail how constitutional issues are raised postconviction, and how those issues are adjudicated by the courts and in accordance with bizarre claims of objectivity. And they show, with a painful immediacy and authenticity, what it is like to live and work under an impending death sentence, the adrenaline rush of the stay or unexpected success, the inconsolable sadness upon the execution of the sick, the afflicted, the innocent.As DNA reversals, last-minute confessions, and revelations of corruption are bringing capital punishment to the forefront of public debate nationwide, this firsthand account of the legalities and realities of the death penalty is as relevant as it is enthralling, as edifying as it is impossible to ignore.

Deathwork: Defending the Condemned

Criminal Law

University of Minnesota Press

Part memoir, part casebook, this probing look at the death penalty focuses on the law that surrounds capital punishment and provides a candid, often disturbing look at how that law is applied. Simultaneous. (Politics & Government)

Deathwork: Defending The Condemned

From 1976, when the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty in Gregg v. Georgia, until their retirements in the early 1990s, Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall doggedly voted against capital punishment in over 2,500 cases. The Justices typically began their opinions by reiterating they were adhering to their views that "the death penalty is in all cases cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments." While most of the dissents upheld without elaboration their conviction that capital punishment was unconstitutional, some explained in detail why, even assuming the death penalty might be constitutional, its application in the case before the Court was not. In this well-researched and copiously documented work, Michael Mello provides a comprehensive analysis of the legal, historical, and philosophical underpinnings of the Justices' relentless dissents against capital punishment. Mello begins with biographical sketches of Brennan and Marshall, examining how two men from divergent legal backgrounds came to share an unswerving stance against the death penalty. He then considers the historical, theoretical, and jurisprudential legitimacy of Supreme Court dissents in general, and sustained dissents in particular.

Against the Death Penalty: The Relentless Dissents of Justices Brennan and Marshall

Northeastern Univ Pr

Legalizing Gay Marriage: Vermont And The National Debate (America In Transition)

Every day seems to bring news of legal challenges to existing marriage laws and the constitutionality of any form of union for same-sex partners. In this timely and accessible book, Michael Mello argues that the public debates and political battles that have divided Vermont and Massachusetts will be repeated across the country as state after state confronts the issue of legalizing gay marriage. Michael Mello examines recent landmark decisions in state and federal high courts granting civil rights protections to homosexuals. In Vermont, the Supreme Court's recommendation that legislators recognize the "common humanity" that links all individuals irrespective of sexual identity and consider the question of same-sex marriage resulted in the first state legislation to establish civil union.In Massachusetts, the court's ruling that gay marriage is a right protected by the state constitution has plunged the legislature into a contentious debate about a constitutional amendment. In both states, as in California and New York, public discussion of equal civil protections for gays and lesbians soon become mired in contending views of morality, religion, social mores, and the sanctity of heterosexual marriage. Mello regards the widespread and virulent opposition to any form of same-sex unions as proof that in Vermont, as elsewhere, homosexuals are indeed a "despised minority" in need of the law's protection.Thus, civil union laws represent only a partial victory because they create a separate and inherently unequal category of relationships for gay people. Mello's analysis of the issues provides an invaluable guide to the battles being waged in state legislatures and by politicians at the national level. Michael Mello is Professor of Law at Vermont Law School and the author of five books on capital punishment, including "The Wrong Man: A True Story of Innocence on Death Row" and "Deathwork: Defending the Condemned".

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Temple University Press

Every day seems to bring news of legal challenges to existing marriage laws and the constitutionality of any form of union for same-sex partners. In this timely and accessible book, Michael Mello argues that the public debates and political battles that have divided Vermont and Massachusetts will be repeated across the country as state after state confronts the issue of legalizing gay marriage. Mello examines recent landmark decisions in state and federal high courts granting civil rights protections to homosexuals. In Vermont, the Supreme Court's recommendation that legislators recognize the common humanity that links all individuals irrespective of sexual identity and consider the question of same-sex marriage resulted in the first state legislation to establish civil union. by the state constitution has plunged the legislature into a contentious debate about a constitutional amendment. In both states, as in California and New York, public discussion of equal civil protections for gays and lesbians soon become mired in contending views of morality, religion, social mores, and the sanctity of heterosexual marriage. Mello regards the widespread and virulent opposition to any form of same-sex unions as proof that in Vermont, as elsewhere, homosexuals are indeed a despised minority in need of the law's protection. Thus, civil union laws represent only a partial victory because they create a separate and inherently unequal category of relationships for gay people. Mello's analysis of the issues provides an invaluable guide to the battles being waged in state legislatures and by politicians at the national level.

Sifting through the mountains of evidence and hype surrounding the "Unabomber" case, the author analyzes the "non-trial" of Ted Kaczynski, revealing the ideological forces that drove him to commit his crimes and the bumbling legal proceedings that accompanied his trial. 25,000 first printing.

The United States of America Versus Theodore John Kaczynski: Ethics, Power and the Invention of the Unabomber

Context Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mello, Michael. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Mello, Michael

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mello, Michael. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Wrong Man: A True Story of Innocence on Death Row

Deathwork: Defending the Condemned

Deathwork: Defending The Condemned

Against the Death Penalty: The Relentless Dissents of Justices Brennan and Marshall

Legalizing Gay Marriage: Vermont And The National Debate (America In Transition)

Legalizing Gay Marriage: Vermont And The National Debate (America In Transition)

The United States of America Versus Theodore John Kaczynski: Ethics, Power and the Invention of the Unabomber