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Title: Deathwork: Defending the Condemned by Michael Mello, Mark Oliver ISBN: 0-8166-4088-2 Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr (Trd) Pub. Date: November, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Substantial additional history regarding Florida's CCR:
Comment: In Michael Mello's excellent book "Dead Wrong: A Death Row Lawyer Speaks Out Against Capital Punishment", Mr. Mello and I have a substantial difference in the facts and their meaning during a key time period in Florida death row post conviction litigation history during Gov. Martinez's "regime":
From page 195 of the hardcover version of the book: "On paper, neither Olive nor Holdman ran CCR; that title belonged to Larry Helm Spalding. With the warrants and the infighting on all fronts, it has suddenly become chic to ridicule Spalding.... I believe that Spalding did some good at CCR. But none of the good can ever come close to compensating for Spalding's fatal decision in the late 1980s, to fire Scharlette Holdman, knowing that Mark Olive would be forced to resign in protest."
In my considered opinion, having worked as an investigator at CCR during this very time period whereas Mr. Mello was in Vermont teaching at a law school at the time in late 1987 and early 1988, Ms. Holdman was out of control, seeking to fire various staff, she then was an abusive alcoholic, she threw a typewriter at a door, she was passively physically aggressive with me in the hallways, refusing to come to work as a form of protest ("strikes" or similar actions by state employees in Florida are prohibited by the Florida Constitution) and more misconduct, including her misrepresentation of her academic record.
Mr. Spalding was willing to even pay her salary since Ms. Holdman is indeed an asset nevertheless and have her work in New York with Dick Burr -- however even Dick Burr with the Legal Defense Fund knew enough about the dark side of Ms. Holdman that he didn't want her working in the same space as himself.
Mr. Spalding had no choice but to terminate Scharlette Holdman. She essentially gave him no other choice. She had committed numerous fireable offenses over the years at CCR, including tampering with evidence.
Ms. Holdman made her situation a national battle by bringing in all the "big guns" in the anti-death penalty community across the country to pressure Mr. Spalding into either allowing Ms. Holdman to continue as she was conducting herself and to pressure Mr. Spalding to resign or otherwise be forced out of office.
And Mr. Olive, whom I admire as one of the best litigators in America for death sentenced persons, had his own substance abuse problems at that time. And he was playing the same hard-ball tactics as Ms. Holdman -- thus his threat to resign should Ms. Holdman be terminated from employment. Mr. Olive chose to resign in an attempt to cripple the agency. However her termination and his resignation did just the opposite.
Mr. Spalding did the right thing given the totality of the circumstances. In fact, the office functioned better and was more effective in our representation of death sentenced persons upon their departure. It is highly ironic that Mr. Mello does not mention even one time the name of Mr. Olive's successor as Chief Litigator, Billy Horatio Nolas, who is just as competent and effective as Mr. Olive. In fact, Mr. Nolas and his legal and investigative team had more successes with stays of execution, winning new sentencing hearings, winning new trials, etc.
Rating: 5
Summary: More Florida Death Penalty History:
Comment: First an introduction: From 1986 - 1992 I was employed as an investigator at the Office of Capital Collateral Representative (CCR) in Tallahassee, Florida, where Scharlette Holdman worked as the supervisor of the investigators from October 1985 - March 1988.
I have known Scharlette since the mid-1970s death penalty debates at Florida State University, including the debate between Professor Richard L. Rubenstein (author of "After Auschwitz", "My Brother Paul", "The Cunning of History: Mass Death and the American Future", "The Age of Triage", "Religion and Eros", and other books) vs. Baptist Minister and Philosopher Will Campbell (the debate was circa 1977).
Her office, the Clearinghouse on Criminal Justice, was in the same wing of the Petroleum Building as my office at Common Cause in Florida (where I was a full-time volunteer during the day and worked at the Brown Derby Restaurant at night from 1981 - 1986).
The Petroluem Building was next to the State Capital, the Florida Supreme Court and the State Archives and Library. When it was torn down, the space and the space for the first CCR office became the Mary Brogan Art and Science Museum and a storm water retaining pond. The Petroleum Building was called by those of us who worked or volunteered there the "Forces of Good" (FOG) Building -- as opposed to FOE -- Forces of Evil, such as Associated Industries, the Chamber and other big business interests in Florida. The FOG building also included (not an exhaustive list) the Clean Water Action Project, the ACLU, NOW, Florida Legal Services, Migrant Farmworker's Organization (directed by Cliff Thaell, who has more recently been a Leon County Commissioner for about ten years or more), Mike Vasilinda's television news service.
About every two years at CCR there was a Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist purge due to the pressures and dysfunctions of the work and the people. I survived two such purges. With the third, I was the first to go in the spring and summer of 1992.
When Scharlette had essentially declared war upon CCR in 1987 and thereafter, some of us decided to investigate her background given some things that we had heard. Low and behold, Scharlette's claim of a PhD in anthropology from the University of Hawaii and a Master's Degree from (if my memory serves me correctly) the University of Birmingham don't exist.
We used Scharlette's Social Security number, her maiden name and her married name -- with all this information, both universities had no record of Scharlette having received any degrees from these institutions.
As I understand Scharlette, she needed the "degrees" to confer upon her "credentials" that she really never needed as she is indeed then and now a national expert on capital mitigation, litigation, etc. However Scharlette can be deceptive, as her lack of a PhD and Masters so demonstrates. Even today she claims to have the degrees as when she gives presentations regarding capital cases, she is identified as "Dr." A key word search of her name will bring up some of the presentations that she has made in the past several years with the title "Dr." preceding her name.
If she has received any honorary or other degrees since 1990, that would be new information for me. If anyone can assist in this matter, please contact me at [email protected] or my mailing address: P.O. Box 38458, Tallahassee, FL 32315-8458. Thank you.
Rating: 5
Summary: Eleven Florida capital cases reviewed:
Comment: Michael Mello, who used to represent death sentenced persons in Florida with the Office of Capital Collateral Representative (CCR) and the Palm Beach County Public Defender's Office in the early to mid-1980s, writes an excellent analysis of eleven Florida capital cases.
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Title: The Hangman's Knot: Lynching, Legal Execution, and America's Struggle with the Death Penalty by Eliza Steelwater ISBN: 081334042X Publisher: Westview Press Pub. Date: July, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: The Wrong Man: A True Story of Innocence on Death Row by Michael Mello, Michael Mello ISBN: 0816637830 Publisher: University of Minnesota Press Pub. Date: April, 2001 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The Death Penalty : An American History by Stuart Banner ISBN: 0674010833 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: 31 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Death Penalty in a Nutshell (Nutshell Series) by Victor Streib ISBN: 0314260242 Publisher: West Pub. Date: 10 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $23.50 |
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Title: Alcoholism, Drug Addiction, and the Road to Recovery: Life on the Edge by Barry Stimmel ISBN: 0789005530 Publisher: Haworth (T) Pub. Date: 15 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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