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

by Michael A. Mello (Author)

There are many important questions raised in this book. The fragmentation of medical values, whether a good doctor requires as much knowledge of the person as of the disease, the claims created by a scientific medicine dependent upon the largesse of government grants, the conversion of medicine from cottage industry to entrepreneurial endeavour, all had their beginnings in medicine's Golden Age. Their heirs, today's practitioners, may have mistaken technology for their task, science for their religion, and business for their creed, but if the spirit of the physicians in this book wins out, medicine's Golden Age is yet in the future.

Back Jacket

After fourteen years as a death row lawyer in Florida, Michael Mello has seen enough. Dead Wrong is a candid and compelling account of his decision to withdraw from "the machinery of death" - the American capital punishment system. Telling stories of 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 twenty years - Mello provides an inside view of death row lawyering as no one has done before. He describes how he and others fought to make the post-conviction system work, ensuring inmates the right to a fair appeal. Alternately impassioned, angry, and haunted by the victims, crimes, and criminals, Mello draws us into the legal maze of appeals, death warrants, stays of execution, and executions. Though Mello is unflinching in his recognition of the brutal realities of capital crimes, his book is a powerful indictment of the death penalty enterprise in America. He is appalled at the lack of vigilance in a system that routinely punishes guilty and innocent alike. And, practicing in Florida, he saw the state's death penalty cost to taxpayers rise to an estimated average $3.2 million per execution - six times the average cost of life imprisonment.

Author Biography

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.