The judgement is reversed,” citing to Miranda v.
It just says, “The motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis and the petition for a writ of certiorari are granted. Tony Amsterdam & Michael wrote an in forma pauperis petition for certiorari, and the Supreme Court granted it on the papers. That statement was ultimately used to convict the man of first degree murder. The police had gotten a statement from a barely literate black man, and upon realizing that they had done so improperly, they sent some journalists to the man’s cell, pretending they were doing a story, to get the statement again. Never heard of it, right? Me either.Īs Michael tells it, in the mid-1960s, he had received some handwritten scrawl with a copy to the Pope. So here it is: The highs & lows of Michael Meltsner, and what they say about him.įirst on Michael’s list was a 1968 case called Robinson v Tennessee. So for the remainder of this short essay, I’ll share what I learned, and then pause for a moment to reflect on what those things say about our friend and colleague Michael Meltsner. (As Michael says, “I’m not so much for holding onto regrets, or at least I deal in selective amnesia and denial.”)
#YOU USED TO SCRAWL ME ACHIEVEMENT PROFESSIONAL#
And that led me to ask Michael what his biggest professional disappointments were, and he begrudgingly conjured up three of those. “So what would you say are your biggest professional achievements? Gimme your top 3.”Īnd that led to a conversation. “Well it might surprise you where I come out,” he suggested.Īnd so I bit. “You wouldn’t say Furman is your biggest professional achievement? Seriously. “What do you mean you don’t know?” I asked. I was catching up with Michael sometime in August, as we periodically do when one of us has reprints or a new project or something else exciting to share, and the conversation turned to professional impact, which led to my saying something to the effect of “It’s every law professor’s dream to have the sort of impact you have had-just to be able to say, ‘well, I was a part of this…’ I mean, being a part of something as big as Furman would be the greatest professional accomplishment one could imagine.”Īnd he said, in that devil’s advocate, distinctly Michael sort of way, “well, I don’t know about that.” That’s how I came to know Michael Meltsner.įast forward to this past summer. The trail was close to campus and we had an hour or two before Michael had to leave for the airport, and he talked to me about scholarship, and what I wanted to accomplish in the academy, and the importance of family. He gave a fantastic talk, but what I remember most about that fateful meeting was our walk along the James River when it was over. I wasn’t going to meet Michael at a death penalty conference because I wasn’t getting invited to any, so I finagled an invite for him to speak at the University of Richmond School of Law, and there we met. That article, Furman Fundamentals, became my first piece on the death penalty, and Michael Meltsner became a lifelong mentor, as he has for so many. All this was quite scary to me at the time.īut I did reach out, and Michael was-as one could imagine-as gracious and generous and kind as he could be. I understood at the time that Michael Meltsner was history in the making, so he was going to know if I had the history wrong, and he wasn’t going to hold back if I did.
And my reticence to ask for a read wasn’t just about the awe. I didn’t know what the etiquette was, but I knew he was something, and I was not. I remember being in awe of Cruel and Unusual, and how I had to muster the courage to reach out and ask this amazing man if he would give my draft a read.
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