Michael Mello, occasional legal advisor to Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski and Vermont Law School professor, argued last night that Kaczynski deserves a new trial because he is not a paranoid schizophrenic, as his lawyers claimed he was.
Mello, whose visit was arranged by the Daniel Webster Legal Society, spoke to a crowd of 30 people in 3 Rockefeller last night and attacked the stance of Kaczynski's lawyers who pleaded their defendant guilty and tried to justify Kaczynski's numerous murders by calling him insane.
Along with three VLS students, Mello helped Kaczynski draft an appeal to "vacate and set aside his guilty plea" under the insanity justification. Earlier, Mello, who was contacted by Kaczynski to help find him a lawyer to file the appeal, was unsuccessful in recruiting a lawyer for Kaczynski's case.
In the very beginning of his speech, Mello, whose mentor Judge Robert Vance was assassinated by another mail-bomber, expressed his "venom for people" who commit murder this way. However, he strongly felt that Kaczynski had a right to determine important personal decisions of his case himself because he is not "just a mad bomber."
Mello blamed Kaczynski's lawyers for presenting "wildly inaccurate information" and making him sound bizarre, adding that the Unabomber's lawyers exploited Kaczynski's reclusive character and the fact that he lives in a small cabin in Montana.
People close to Kaczynski did not believe he was insane, Mello said, adding the unabomber chose to lead a reclusive life in Montana because it was "strikingly beautiful" and because he enjoyed solitude.
Mello admitted Kaczynski is a very complex murderer adverse to technology, who spent two decades of his life committing the most "premeditated, deliberated series of murders" he had ever seen. He said he still believed Kaczynski was an "intensely sane bomber."
Mello quoted a close friend of Kaczynski who said: "I have never known anyone more sane than Ted."
Mello, who has exchanged 150 letters and four phone calls with Kaczynski in the last 10 months, described their correspondence as an "odd pen-pal relationship."
Having also recently completed a book on the Kaczynski case, Mello said he is not Kaczynski's lawyer and he helped the Unabomber draft his appeal only because no one else was willing to do so. Mello called his role in helping Kaczynski get a free trial his duty as a lawyer.
Agreeing that Kaczynski's guilty plea under the insanity justification was "coerced" by the Unabomber's lawyers, Mello described the Unabomber's Manifesto published in The New York Times and The Washington Post as sober and thoughtful and not the work of an insane man.
Mello said dismissing Kaczynski as "just a mad, crazy bomber" is easy but inaccurate, adding a perfectly sane man who spent 20 years hand-making tools to hand make mail-bombs is something "far scarier than being crazy."
