Jan. 13 CONNECTICUT----impending execution A Killer's Seesawing Emotions Described Serial killer Michael Ross has written more than 200 farewell letters to friends as his execution date draws near, and is distraught that only a few have responded, said Robert Nave, who heads the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty and regularly visits Ross. "He cried every time he mentioned the fact that he got only a few responses," Nave said. "He could not believe that nobody out there cared for him anymore. The celebrity has worn off. "I think he is upset by this loss of status, but I also think that he wants it back very badly, and is willing to die to get it back." Nave's observations are part of the arguments being made by the Office of the Chief Public Defender that Ross is mentally unstable and unable to rationally forgo further appeals, and that the execution should be postponed indefinitely. The case made by Ross' former public defenders to the state's highest court is in sharp contrast to the Michael Ross portrayed on videotapes submitted to the Supreme Court Tuesday by Ross' lawyer, T.R. Paulding. The videotapes show Ross during his nearly four-hour competency interview last month with Dr. Michael Norko. The subjects range from suicide attempts to jigsaw puzzles. At times Ross is emotional, when talking about his victims' relatives and a recent television movie, "The Five People You Meet in Heaven," which moved him to tears. But he also appears lucid, intelligent and witty, which led Norko to conclude that he is mentally competent to "volunteer" to be executed. Ross has avenues of appeal still open to him that he could exercise at any time that would halt his execution, scheduled for Jan. 26. The public defenders, who represented Ross for 17 of his 20 years of confinement and legal maneuverings, have visited Ross regu- larly over the past few months. In more than 150 pages of documents filed with the state Supreme Court, they depict an educated man who has grown weary of the restrictive conditions on death row and sees no way out other than lethal injection. His own father, Dan Ross, has tried in vain to wage two lawsuits in recent weeks challenging Michael Ross' competency finding and the method of his execution. Judges in both cases said he had no authority to act on his son's behalf, and that Michael Ross was legally competent to make the decisions he had made. "Michael is extremely narcissist. We always talk about him and his circumstances," Dan Ross said in a statement submitted to the court. "Lately he talks about his execution. He appears to view himself as the director of a theatrical production. He talks about guest witnesses, prosecution witnesses, final statements, who would be viewing the body, funeral services, monuments, etc. He's excited about the attention and concerned about how people perceive him." The 2 public defenders who represented Ross at his most recent penalty phase hearing in 2000 are prepared to testify about recent emotional outbursts. Barry Butler visited Ross Nov. 26, the day after Thanksgiving. Butler described Ross as being "extremely emotional, erratic in his thinking, conflicted and inconsistent regarding his decision to volunteer for execution." "Most disturbing to me," Butler said, "was the fact that he stated he was `too emotional to make any decision' and that he was relying on his former decisions - which he presumed to be rationally based." Butler said he discussed with Ross how they both believe they are always right, and how both men are stubborn. Ross, he said, agreed. "He stated that on the one hand, he wanted to go through with his decision and on the other hand, he wished or was hopeful that someone would come along and do something which would result in a life sentence," Butler said. Paula Mangini Montonye, a public defender Ross recently accused of laying a "guilt trip" on him by telling him he was not considering how his further appeals might benefit other death row inmates, said she was struck by how willing Ross was to continue to meet with her and other public defenders in November and December. "He did not just acquiesce to such meetings, but rather encouraged them and wanted them to continue," Montonye said. "It was clear to him that I was someone who would not agree with or endorse his purported decision. ... The visits were nothing less than extreme roller coaster rides of emotions. "He would cry repeatedly and at the slightest provocation, then pull himself together and subsequently behave as if nothing happened," Montonye wrote. He told her he was "prison tired." Public defender Lauren Weisfeld represented Ross on appeal and met with him last September. She said Ross expressed frustration with the more restrictive environment on death row and his inability to communicate to his best friend on the row, Robert Breton. "Mike both expressed and displayed exhaustion, despair and conflict," Weisfeld said. Although Ross' command of death penalty law has been much vaunted by prosecutors and judges alike, Weisfeld said that during her visit with him he "demonstrated his ignorance of important aspects of relevant law and procedures," including the clemency process. Weisfeld likened Ross and his present predicament to the people who jumped from the burning World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001. "Those people faced a ghastly choice between passively waiting for a hideous death, or taking control of their situations and making the only `choice' they had left," Weisfeld said. "It seems to me Mike is at a point where he seems so helpless, so out of control and in such extraordinarily dire circumstances, that he has been driven to a figurative ledge. He is no more voluntarily 'choosing' to die than did the poor people who jumped from the towers." The public defenders also have two psychiatrists prepared to testify and challenge Norko's finding that Ross is competent. Dr. Stuart Grassian, a psychiatrist in Cambridge, Mass., who specializes in the psychiatric effects of stringent conditions of confinement, has closely studied death row inmates. "It is this desperate need to regain control which underlies an inmate's decision to volunteer by waiving his appeals and dismissing his attorneys," Grassian said. "The post-conviction appeal process in capital cases is inherently grueling - a roller coaster of hope and despair, and often of utter helplessness." Grassian said Norko's report lacks "professional skepticism" and seems to "endorse Mr. Ross' statements at face value." Also included in the public defenders' submissions to the court is a letter Ross sent to journalist Martha Elliott, who wrote about Ross for the Connecticut Law Tribune 10 years ago. It was written in May 1998, and addresses his suicide attempt when he learned he could not stipulate to a death sentence. "I did then (and truly do now) care for the welfare of the families of my victims," Ross wrote. "But the truth is, I was driven more by a desire to end my own pain than out of any noble cause." Paulding, Ross' lawyer, said he didn't see anything in the public defenders' voluminous filings that should prompt the courts to delve further into Ross' competency. "It speaks to a person who is obviously going through a very emotional time, but I don't think it speaks to whether that person is not competent," Paulding said. "I think there's a distinction between the 2." Dr. Eric Goldsmith, a psychiatrist who teaches how to conduct competency examinations at New York University, criticized Norko for not exploring how Ross' mood disorder and other emotional factors may have factored into his decision to forgo further appeals. Goldsmith said he believes there are "serious questions" about Ross' competency. (source: Hartford Courant) ******************** Residents torn by state's death penalty Mourn for the victims, not their killer. That was the message Gov. Jodi Rell (Republican) delivered in early December as she announced her decision not to grant a reprieve to convicted rapist and murderer Michael Ross. The decision clears the way for Connecticut's 1st execution in 44 years. Last weekend, Bishop William E. Lori rallied 400,000 Roman Catholics in the area in support of overturning Rell's decision. He wrote a letter urging that the state abolish the death penalty. This was read to the diocese's 87 parishes during last Sunday's masses. Parishioners were asked to sign a formal petition requesting that. Rell stop Ross's Jan. 26 execution. "We are rightly troubled by the crimes by which Mr. Michael Ross has been convicted and by the irreparable harm done to his victims and their families," Lori wrote in his letter. "Those who commit such crimes should not be allowed to wreak further havoc and destruction on society. However, such terrible crimes will not be redressed by killing the criminal nor is there evidence the death penalty deters future heinous crimes." Ross, 45, received 6 death sentences and 2 life sentences in 1987. In 1994, the state Supreme Court ordered a new penalty hearing, ruling that prosecutors had withheld a letter from a psychiatrist that could have helped the defense. Recently, Ross' lawyer has been helping him defend his decision to waive the appeals process and become the 1st inmate executed in Connecticut since 1960. The convictions covered the rape and murder of 4 teenage girls in Connecticut in 1982 and 1983. He also admitted killing 2 others in New York in 1982 while he was a student at Cornell University. Prosecutors suspect he killed at least 2 other women, but he never faced charges on those murders. At his trial, Ross never denied his guilt. Instead he claimed a sexual sadism dysfunction drove him to commit the crimes. Petition promoted The Connecticut Catholic Conference, an organization of state bishops, and the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty created the petition Lori urged Catholics to sign. In saying that the execution is morally wrong, Lori invokes the Catholic Church's position about respecting all human life. "A consistent ethic of life recognizes the fundamental human dignity and rights even of those whose actions are morally repugnant and dangerous to the well-being of society," Lori said. "Clearly, the state has a duty to protect the citizenry from such dangers. Except as a last resort, however, taking life is not the way we, as a civilized society, should defend life." Even with so strong a voice advocating abolition of the death penalty, Monroe's residents, including those of the Roman Catholic faith, have expressed mixed reactions to capital punishment. During a breakfast social after mass at Saint Jude Church last week, Susan Cheshire said she has always opposed the death penalty. "I don't think anyone has the right to make the decision to take a life," she said. However, if one of her own family members were hurt or killed in a violent crime, she said, she would have a difficult time maintaining this opinion. "It's a difficult thing," she admitted. "I hope I would still be against it." As Bernie Prushko sipped coffee, he questioned whether the death penalty is really a deterrent for those who are intent upon committing violent acts. "Is it really effective?" he said. "It's on the books because it's supposed to be a deterrent for serious crimes, but is it really effective?" The Rev. Joseph "Skip" Karczinski, a priest at St. Jude Church, addressed the issue during his sermon Sunday, saying it was "too emotional and too serious a subject to just throw out there without some opportunity for reflection." He told parishioners that he planned to sign the petition because he doesn't think capital punishment is "the best, the only and the final solution" for dealing with violent offenders. He also said it is not a spiritually healthy practice for our society as a whole. "It brings us back to a form a punishment that Jesus himself opposed - an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," Karczinski said. He admitted to keeping his remarks about the complicated topic purposely "simple and incomplete" because there were so many young people at the Mass. However, he encouraged the adults to continue to look for other alternatives to capital punishment. "There must be a voice that says, 'could there be a better way to deal with violent crime in Connecticut?'" he said. Not all parishioners agreed with him. Some said they will not sign the bishop's petition next weekend because they favor of capital punishment. One woman commented that it's easy to take the "high road" and call for abolishing the death penalty when neither she nor anyone she knew was personally involved. Another parishioner, also in favor of upholding the state's current legislation and executing Ross, said she resented having to pay for violent offenders' lifetime sentence in prison. She would prefer to have more state funding spent on programs for children rather than going towards providing food, shelter, computers and televisions for criminals in state penitentiaries. Monroe resident Edward R. Zuck offered his opinion on the controversial subject when he stopped by the Monroe Senior Center to pick up his wife from the Knit and Crochet club. He said that while he doesn't like seeing violent offenders put to death, he is afraid of potential repercussions if the state did away with the death penalty. "I feel like we're opening the door for people to commit murder without there being any penalties," Zuck said. "Today we're more concerned with the perpetrators' rights and not the victims'. There is no justice for the victims." His wife, Lucille, disagrees. "I want him [Ross] to live so he can suffer," she said. "He deserves to suffer, and if he dies, then that's the end of it." Several seniors were thinking about the victims' families as they expressed their support for upholding the state's capital punishment legislation. They hoped the families could find some peace of mind and "closure," they said. "I think they should [execute Ross]," Phyllis Super said. "These criminals are worthless." Megan DeVita, 15, a freshman at Masuk High School, said she feels bad that Ross will be executed. She acknowledges, however, the many horrible crimes he committed and said, "I think the punishment is justified." Another local teen disagreed, calling the scheduled execution "brutal". "The death penalty seems like an emotional response that just doesn't feel right to me," she said. Many residents admit to feeling torn by this issue and said there are no easy answers. Sharon Gesek, senior center director, said she is "theoretically" against the death penalty. "However, I would have a hard time if it was one of my family members that he admitted to killing," Gesek said. State lawmakers also vary in their opinions. State Sen. Bill Finch (D-22) said Rell's decision saddened him. "On a moral basis, I am opposed to the government killing people, except in specific wartime instances," he said. "I detest people like Ross as much as anyone, but it demeans all of our society when we kill someone." He said the death penalty puts a "black mark" on all the good government can do. "This hurts society doubly," Finch said. "We had to suffer the acts of the guilty, and then we have their blood on our hands." When Rell announced that she would let the execution go through, she said she had sworn an oath to uphold state law and that she intended to do so, regardless of her personal beliefs. "To uphold the law of Connecticut is to uphold the death penalty," she said in December. According to spokesman Dennis Schain, the governor still doesn't intend to grant a reprieve, despite Lori's request. State Sen. George Gunther (R-21), who represents a portion of Monroe, said he supports capital punishment. "This man is a prime example of why we should have the death penalty," he said. State Rep. Debralee Hovey also supports the state's law, saying that Ross cannot be rehabilitated. "He has no conscience and no remorse," she said. "I think the death penalty is appropriate for this individual." If the state Legislature chooses to do so, it can overturn the death penalty statute in the next few weeks. Finch thinks a debate is likely, though he doubts there are enough votes to repeal the law. "I think we're lacking some of the political courage to eliminate something that we all deep-down know is barbaric," Finch said. "I don't play God, and I don't think the state should either." Lori agrees, saying, "The death penalty diminishes each of us. It offers the tragic illusion that we can defend life by taking life." (source: Monroe Courier) ********************** 'Thou Shalt Not Kill'----Woman Opposes Death Penalty Despite Personal Stake Annie Landry of Groton, Conn, breaks down as she speaks about her twin brother Charlie Cletus, who was stabbed to death in 1956 while sitting in a Brooklyn, N.Y. diner. Landry is against the death penalty, as she was in her brother's case. Most people have an opinion about the death penalty, especially with the Jan. 26 execution date of serial killer Michael Ross daily making news. But Anna O'Regan Graham Landry, a 72-year-old former Groton town councilor, is more entitled than most to voice her opinion, which was forged through bleak experience in 1957. That year her twin brother, Charles Cletus O'Regan, was murdered at a diner in Brooklyn, N.Y. Landry can't know what punishment her brother's killer would have chosen those many years ago. She has read that Ross wants to die, as scheduled, by lethal injection. But justice, in her view, demands that Ross get what he deserves, not what he wants. Charlie O'Regan's assassin, as Landry calls the man who killed her brother, stabbed him to death after a card game at a neighborhood diner. It was O'Regan's wedding anniversary. Waiting for him at home, besides his wife, were a 3-year-old son and a 2-month-old daughter. "He wanted a little girl so much," recalls Landry of her then 25-year-old brother. The killer's name, she says, was Angelo Marconi. "He was very jealous of my brother," she says, who was "extremely handsome, and everybody loved him." "Of course there were a lot of witnesses," Landry says. Witnesses testified, she recalls, that "my brother was having coffee and a doughnut after playing cards, before this Angelo Marconi reached over the counter and got a butcher knife and stabbed my brother in his back." "It went through his lungs and out his chest. He died immediately," says Landry. "It penetrated his heart as well." Hurts this big never completely heal. Talking about it almost a half century later, Landry starts to cry. She was widowed in December, for the 2nd time, and she's feeling deep all the losses and the loneliness. "I think of it very often," she says of her brother's murder. "We werevery close growing up, going to school together every day, coming home for lunch. We double-dated when we grew up, and we were attendants at each other's weddings." At the time of his death, Landry says, "we only lived 3 blocks from each other," in the same Bushwick section of Brooklyn where they had grown up. "It was very difficult," says Landry, "but God helped me through it. It's still a heartache after all these years." There was wide sentiment in and outside the courtroom, says Landry, that Marconi "should be put to death for taking such a wonderful man's life." During the trial, she says, "I was weeping so badly that the judge called me up and asked me who I was. I told him I was Charlie's twin sister, and he said, "How do you feel about this man getting the death penalty?'" "I said, 'Your Honor, I am against the death penalty. I am a Roman Catholic, and God gave Moses the commandment that 'Thou Shalt Not Kill,' and I don't believe the state or anybody else has the right to take any life unless it's in a time of war to defend my country.'" Then, Landry says, she looked directly over at Marconi and said to him, "I hope you go to prison and I hope you stay there for a lot of years, and have your children grow up without you just as my brother's 2 babies will ... "And when your children don't have a father at home, they'll ask mom where he is, and she'll say he's in prison for killing an innocent man." Turning back to the judge, "I told him, 'That, to me, would give me justice, your honor.'" Marconi did not get the death penalty, says Landry. He was convicted of manslaughter, not murder, she says, because the prosecutor couldn't prove premeditation. He got a long prison sentence, but only served about a year. "He was killed in prison," she says, "stabbed in the back in the same place that my twin brother was, and they never found the assassin." Marconi had 2 children, Landry says, a boy and a girl. Shortly after the trial, Landry and her 1st husband, Edward W. Graham, moved to Connecticut, where Graham took a job with Pfizer Inc. He died in 1987. Landry has two grown children, Glen Graham, a teacher at Fitch High School in Groton, and Christopher Graham, who works at Pfizer. Her 2nd husband, Thomas H. Landry Jr., died last month. Charlie O'Regan's killer did not have much of a lifetime to be reminded of his crimes, and of what he was missing. Landry says she believes her brother's killer burns now in hell, and that Michael Ross will eventually join him. Landry has always looked to her faith for answers, and her position on the death penalty, like that of her church, hasn't changed. Last Sunday, the bishop of the Norwich Diocese urged all Catholics to sign a petition seeking to abolish the death penalty. Ross, himself a Roman Catholic, confessed to the rape and murder of five young women and the murder of a 6th more than 20 years ago in southeastern Connecticut. "He wants to die," says Landry, "but I can't abide by that." "He wants to get it over with," she adds, ignoring claims by Ross that he wants to take responsibility for his crimes and help end the suffering of his victims' families. "He doesn't want to have to spend the rest of his natural life in prison. But I don't think he should be granted his wish." (source: The Day) SOUTH CAROLINA----3 family members, including female, face death penalty Abbeville parents, son could face death sentence for '03 murder charges In Columbia, prosecutors will seek the death penalty for 3 family members involved in a 2003 stand-off in Abbeville that resulted in the deaths of 2 law enforcement officers. Prosecutor Jerry Peace on Thursday said Arthur and Rita Bixby and their son, Steven, will face a possible death sentence if they are convicted. Steven Bixby, 32, was told in August about a death sentence. Peace says Rita Bixby, 72, was told last month, and Arthur Bixby, 75, will be given formal notice soon. 37-year-old Abbeville County Sheriff's Sergeant Danny Wilson was killed when he went to the Bixbys' house to discuss a road construction project on December 8th, 2003. 63-year-old Constable Donnie Ouzts was killed when he went to help Wilson. Peace says no trial dates have been set. Rita Bixby's attorney, Jeff Bloom, says seeking the death penalty against the entire family adds tragedy to tragedy. South Carolina Department of Corrections statistics show no women on death row. The oldest person on death row is 60-year-old Fred Singleton. Steven and Arthur Bixby are charged with 2 counts of murder, conspiracy, kidnapping and possessing a weapon during a violent crime. Rita Bixby, who wasn't in the house during the standoff, is charged as an accessory. Steven Bixby says he shot Wilson because the officer forced his way into the Bixby home. Steven and Arthur Bixby, who was also shot, were both later taken into custody after a 13-hour standoff. The state says it purchased the right of way to the Bixby's land from the previous owner more than 40 years ago. (source: Associated Press) FLORIDA: Court upholds death sentences for Pinellas murders The state Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of a man who murdered 2 women 25 years ago in Pinellas County and claimed to have killed dozens more. In other rulings Thursday, the high court upheld a death sentence given for a 1983 Jacksonville murder but, for the 2nd time, threw out the death sentence given a man for a 1995 murder in Osceola County. James Winkles, 64, is on death row for the 1980 murder of 19-year-old Elizabeth Graham of St. Petersburg and the 1981 murder of Margo Delimon of Clearwater. Both women were raped multiple times over several days before Winkles killed them. He buried their bodies but later exhumed and beheaded the corpses and discarded the skulls in other locations. The murders went unsolved for many years until Winkles, serving a life sentence for the 1982 kidnapping of a woman who survived and escaped, confessed. In interviews with detectives he claimed to have kidnapped, raped and killed over 60 women, including 40 in Pinellas County. Detectives said Thursday that Winkles remains a suspect in other disappearances, but they have never been able to verify his involvement in the dozens of slayings that he claims. In Thursday's unsigned ruling, the Florida Supreme Court rejected Winkles' appeal, which challenged the constitutionality of Florida's death penalty law based on a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court striking a similar but not identical death penalty law in Arizona. In that 2002 decision, the nation's high court said a jury and not a judge must decide whether there are aggravating factors that would justify a death sentence. Florida's high court upheld the state's law in October 2002 after hearing the 1st appeal based on the Arizona ruling - and it has consistently turned back other appeals since. The court also reviewed the facts of the case and concluded that the death sentence was justified. "In comparison to other cases, these homicides are certainly among the most aggravated and least mitigated of 1st-degree murder cases," the unsigned opinion concluded. The opinion was unanimous with the exception of Justice Harry Lee Anstead, who dissented as far as the constitutional issues were concerned. In another capital case, the court rejected the appeal of Gregory Kokal, 41, on death row for the 1983 fatal beating and shooting of hitchhiker Jeffrey Russell on a Jacksonville beach. Thursday's unsigned opinion was unanimous except that Anstead concurred in the result only. In a 3rd case, the court threw out the death sentence given to Jermaine LeBron, 30, for the murder of 1995 murder of Larry Neal Oliver in Osceola County. The Supreme Court had vacated LeBron's first death sentence in 2001 and ordered a new penalty hearing because the trial judge overruled the jury's verdict that LeBron had not fired the fatal shot but was guilty of felony murder. The next year, a 2nd jury recommended that LeBron be sentenced to death and the trial judge agreed. But in Thursday's opinion, the state's high court said the judge had erred by allowing the jury to hear details of a robbery conviction. The court ordered that a new penalty hearing be held. Justice Peggy Quince dissented and Justice Charles Wells was recused from the case. (source: Associated Press) KANSAS: Death Penalty Discussions Some lawmakers and prosecutors are cautioning the Legislature against moving too quickly to resurrect the death penalty law struck down by the state Supreme Court. The court ruled last month that the 1994 law was unconstitutional. The decision focused on language requiring juries to impose the death penalty in cases where the evidence for and against execution is roughly equal. The ruling invalidated the death sentences of six convicted killers. Attorney General Phill Kline plans to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Johnson County District Attorney Paul Morrison says lawmakers should do nothing until the nation's highest court decides whether to hear the case. If the court upholds the existing law, the death penalty could be reinstated against the 6 inmates without new trials. (source: Associated Press)
