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Court gives 'Crazy Joe' 11th-hour reprieve
“Crazy Joe” Spaziano receives a last-minute stay of execution on his 50th birthday September 25, 1995. In 1975 police charged Joe Spaziano with the 1973 rape-torture slaying of 18-year-old hospital clerk Laura Lynn Harberts. Jurors found Spaziano…
Governor asked to free 'Crazy Joe'
This is an article describing the admittance that a testimony previously given in trial of Joe Spaziano was false. Spaziano's lawyer Michael Mello has asked the governor to free Spaziano, while the police are certain that Spaziano is still the…
Cutting appeals 'could be Catch-22'
Pan to eliminate state appeals for death row inmates may not speed up the legal process.
Booker death sentence reversed: the state immediately appealed the ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta
The death sentence of Stephen Todd Booker was overturned because the jury did not look at all mitigating evidence. Booker was before convicted of beating, raping, and stabbing a 94 year old woman.
Second ruling, had it come earlier, may have saved some inmates, ex-public defender says
An article about a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed Florida courts to consider additional mitigating circumstances in death penalty cases.
Future executions hinge on Supreme Court case
This newspaper clipping is an article detailing how the undecided nature of the Supreme Court case, Lockhart v. McCree, has allowed Mello to successfully appeal for stays of execution for two of his clients on death row.