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

Michael A. Mello (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 11, 1999

"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

Winner-1998 Award for Excellence in Indexing, American Society of Indexers and H. W. Wilson Company

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

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 rule. 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. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press (March 11, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0299153444
• ISBN-13: 978-0299153441
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,804,924 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Burning with rage, incoherent with indignation, August 23, 1998

By 

Julian P Killingley - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dead Wrong: A Death Row Lawyer Speaks Out Against Capital Punishment (Hardcover)

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A different perspective, November 21, 2000

By A Customer

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This review is from: Dead Wrong: A Death Row Lawyer Speaks Out Against Capital Punishment (Paperback)

Mello writes this book from the perspective of a former post-conviction death penalty attorney. While all that he says is true about our unjust and "stacked" system of capital defense work, I worry that his personal conculsion - to personally "opt out" of the system, will result in even more executions. It must be hard to continue to work in a system that is stacked against your clients from the very beginning....but I'm not sure if refusal to participate is the answer. Perhaps an alternative...but not an answer.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Frantic, at times brilliant, much testosterone, bold, May 20, 1998

By 

William J. Hardy "FlawLaw" (Buffalo, New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dead Wrong: A Death Row Lawyer Speaks Out Against Capital Punishment (Hardcover)

This book is truly a find. The pace is at times frantic, personal, heartwrenching. Mello is at times humble, at times arrogant, at times self-righteous, at times self-deprecating. I found myself engrossed, not so much because I felt "sorry" for anyone. It was not like with Dead Man Walking, where the characters drew me into their world. I found that I did not want to enter this world, but was pushed into the world of the lawyers, the judges, and horrifyingly, those who committed the crimes. A must read, though enter the door at your own risk...