USA Versus Ted Kaczynski (CL)

by Michael Mello

Book Overview

On January 22, 1998, Theodore John Kaczynski, Montana recluse and accused Unabomber, pled guilty and received three life sentences after a dramatic behind-the-scenes legal struggle. Kaczynski was... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1893956016
• ISBN13: 9781893956018
• Release Date: May 1999
• Publisher: Context Publications
• Length: 367 Pages
• Weight: 1.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

About Time

If there is a particular strength to this book, it is in the revelation that the man who dared to judge Kaczynski, one of the fed's premier affirmative action judges, failed to understand the processes of his own courtroom. Unwilling to become a joke like Brother Lance, this judge decided that his courtroom would not become a soap box for Ted's deranged philosophies, forgeting, along the way, that the Constitution requires that the courtroom become a soap box for the defendant, his one chance to speak his defense, and for the people to weight that defense. Thank you Michael Mello for reminding us that everyone is entitled to his day in court. Top notch book.

involving

Mello analysis of the Unabomber case gave me an in depth look at the horrors of the U.S. legal system while keeping it at an accessible level, as opposed to the usual degeneration into "legalese" that many lawyers throw at us.

We need real information...

Has anybody ever seen a complete list of the contents of Ted's cabin? I need to know the books he had. I've heard he had hundreds of books. What were they? Can anyone tell me what books Ted was reading? Have you noticed how the press squashed that aspect of this man's life?

Surprisingly powerful.

I was expecting a somewhat dry recountal of judicial process and courtroom manuevers when I began reading this title, and was completely surprised to find a book which raises a multitude of thought provoking issues. Mello presents Kaczynski's case clearly and intelligently, and provides a strong argument to support his belief that Kaczynski was unfairly manipulated by his attorneys and Judge Burrell. Yet along the way, Mello also tackles significant topics such as the definition of insanity, media misguiding, euthanasia vs. state assisted suicide vs. consensual execution, personal agenda/ethics in the legal field, diaries and the right to privacy, et cetera. Many of these issues are intelligently discussed within the context of very interesting historical cases. Mello's writing style came across to me as somewhat lacking in personality, at first, yet I soon realized that his straightforward voice is most effective in communicating the issues at hand. In choosing a no-nonsense style, the author does well to include numerous quotes and excerpts from disparate notables such as Anne Frank, Camus, Walt Whitman, Nietzsche, Bram Stoker, Rilke, Socrates, et cetera to pepper the reading with a chorus of voices. By concluding the book with victim descriptions from the Government's Sentencing Memorandum, Mello provides a complete and haunting plot twist....rather unsettling. This book offers not only an incredibly fair, edifying and intriguing view of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of the judicial players, but also solicits the reader into contemplation of important issues. I highly reccommend this book not only to those interested in the specifics of Kaczynski's experience, but to anyone interested in reading an evolved, well thought and thought-provoking book.

interesting, disturbing

I have followed the Unabomber case from since before it ever came to be known that Kaczynski was the Unabomber. Michael Mello has made me understand a thing or two about the way our court system is more like a political arena than it is a forum for justice. While I agree with Mello as to the fact that Kaczynski is the Unabomber, I wish he'd come out and said that this was a star chamber-like proceeding where the truth was hidden behind the curtain of ideological protectionism (to his credit he does imply it) -- I feel that Mello has done the reader a great service in exposing a farce of a case that was engineered to avert a death penalty at the expense of destroying a potential folk hero of the environmental movement. It is surprisingly a page turner and I can recommend it.