Jan. 24 KENTUCKY: Gov. Fletcher violating medical ethics? 'The ultimate absurdity' Regarding your Jan. 16 editorial, "Fletcher's grim duty": In my view, it's absurd for you to be surprised that a doctor who orders - under any circumstances - another person to be put to death would be challenged for violating the ethical standards he swore to uphold as a physician. When we take an oath, it's in force so long as we want the rewards that go along with the responsibilities. If Gov. Ernie Fletcher wants to be called a physician, then he should act like one. What's absurd is not seeing this train wreck coming when he ran for the governor's office in the first place. In my view, it's absurd for you to suggest that a governor doesn't have the constitutional power and authority to commute a death sentence. Or that he can't recuse himself the way judges or jurors do when their ethical beliefs come into conflict with matters before them. I'm not alone. More and more Kentuckians question the death penalty for more and more reasons. That's because the death penalty is the ultimate absurdity. Killing another human being to show that killing is wrong. What would you call that? DOUG STERN----Louisville 40206 **** 'A new day in ethics' So it is fine for licensed doctor Ernie Fletcher to order an execution in violation of the American Medical Association and Kentucky Medical Association's ethics codes. It's too bad televangelist Jimmy Swaggart had to have his ethics judged by the Assemblies of God rather than the Kentucky medical ethics board or Courier-Journal editorial board. You may recall that Swaggart had his ministry license pulled for consorting with prostitutes. Following Gov. Fletcher's lead, Swaggart should have pointed out that he was not serving as a minister during the times he patronized a prostitute, so there were no grounds for having his license revoked. Also, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the physician implicated in several assisted suicides, could have claimed he was serving as a technician, not a physician, when he helped terminally ill folks hasten their demise. Unfortunately for him, the Michigan medical board did not have the Fletcher precedent, and Kevorkian had his license revoked. When the Republicans promised a new day in ethics, who would have guessed their goal was to go as low as possible? Their motto seems to be: "As bad as they want to be," and they are certainly hitting that goal. DON OSBORN----Louisville 40205 (source: Letters to the Editor, Courier-Journal) CONNECTICUT----impending execution Local television stations ramp up for coverage of execution Connecticut television news outlets have been ramping up coverage of the planned execution of serial killer Michael Ross -- a story that also is attracting regional and national media. - In a series of reports last week, for instance, WTIC-61s "News at Ten" visited the town of Griswold, which lost 3 lives in the string of slayings, went to Rosss hometown and interviewed the cop who arrested him. WTICs Shelly Sindland will be 1 of 5 media witnesses to the execution, said WTIC news official Bob Rockstroh. - News Channel 8 plans expanded editions of its evening broadcasts that will air Tuesday on WCTXs 10 p.m. news show and on WTNHs 11 p.m. broadcast. "In addition," said WTNH-8 General Manager Jon Hitchcock, "we do plan on cutting in at 2 a.m. when verification follows (with) an update/special edition." - WFSB-3 News Director Lyn Tolan also planned a short special report around 2 a.m. and then extended coverage starting with the 5 a.m. news show Wednesday. Tolan last week said shes been through this before. "I recall when the death penalty was re-instated when I lived and worked in Ohio. It was a similar circumstance in that there was no execution since the 1960s. They also had a 'volunteer,' as they are termed in death penalty states," Tolan said. Tolan remembers the inmate's name, too. "Most Ohioans still recall the name of Wilford Berry because he was the first," she said. "Most probably couldnt name the most recent executions. It becomes a matter of course for the system, the legislature and the citizenry." That's the point for protesters, who will undoubtedly find screen time on WFSB, WTNH, WTIC-61, WVIT-30, NECN, Comcasts CN8 and the national cable news channels. Tolan and Hitchcock said last week that coverage plans are changing, as more information becomes available from the state. But after 45 years without a death penalty, Connecticut's case is sure to command local and national attention, he said. "Viewers," Tolan said, "can expect first-hand accounts from witnesses to the execution as well as stories about the victims, who we dont want to see lost in all this discussion. These were young lives snuffed out and they should not be forgotten among the publicity surrounding Michael Ross." Asked if the planned event might become a media circus, Tolan said wide media interest "is to be expected with the first execution in the state in decades. The Department of Correction and the State of Connecticut will determine how much of a circus it becomes, based on how they handle it. "While this is a first for Connecticut, there are many states that provide an orderly and professional process for enforcement of the law." - Comcast Cables CN8 will air coverage at 7 p.m. Tuesday when its "Nightbeat" program airs live outside of Osborn Correctional Institution in Somers. According to a spokeswoman, cable channel CN8 will cover the expected prayer vigil and other news surrounding the event. Host Barry Nolan will speak with a panel of guests about the execution, how it will affect the legal system in Connecticut and whether it could lead other states to reinstate the death penalty. Guests will include Deacon David Reynolds, legislative liaison for the Connecticut Catholic Conference, who will discuss the Catholic Churchs efforts to abolish the death penalty. - CPTV on Friday reran an exclusive 1989 interview with Ross, in which the Cornell University grad expressed his thoughts about electrocution, the death penalty and God. The program will air again Tuesday at 11 p.m., an official said. (source: The Middletown Press) **************** On Web site, Ross tells dreams, compulsions Michael Ross used to have a dream. In it, he'd hear the warden read the death warrant to him. He'd see himself walking down a corridor to his execution chamber. Once inside, the blinds would open and Ross could see his witnesses, people wearing party hats, drinking champagne and laughing as confetti float down around them. When correction officers strap him in, Ross said, he becomes weightless in his dream. He floats through the prison bars and soars outside, looking down on "a crowd of hundreds of people gathered at the front gate. They suddenly start counting in unison just as if it were New Year's Eve: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And they start cheering, shouting and hollering as the lights dim and flicker." "I know now that I am dead," Ross wrote in one of his postings on a Web site operated by an anti-death penalty group. Come Wednesday, Ross' dream, except for the flickering lights, may become a reality. The serial killer, who admitted raping and killing 8 young women in the 1980s, has given up his fight to stay alive. At 2:01 a.m. Wednesday, he is slated to become the 1st person to be executed in Connecticut since May 17, 1960, when Joseph "Mad Dog" Taborsky was put to death for a series of robbery-murders. But for now Ross' dream sequence is just one of the writings some old, some recent that fill his Web page on a site operated by the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty. It can be found at http://ccadp.org/michaelross.htm. Ross' page is just one of 500 devoted to death row inmates on the site, created in 1998. Another 500 death row inmates have postings for pen pals. "In many respects, we are their window to the outside world," said Tracy Lamourie, a co-founder of the coalition. "These are human beings who are often locked in a room 23 hours a day. Some are looking for help. Some are looking for friends." Of all inmates who have a presence on the coalition's Web site, Lamourie said Ross' writings stand out. "He's unusually articulate," Lamourie said of Ross, a 45-year-old graduate of Cornell University. Lamourie reads everything the inmates send in but has never seen anything that compares to what Ross sends. She said she has directed others to his writings. Ross uses his site to explain his decision to die, describe his life in prison and discuss the sexual sadism that he says torments him. He even expresses his feelings to his victims' families. But Edwin Shelley, the father of victim Leslie Shelley, doesn't care what Ross has to say. "I've never gone to the site," he said. " I don't pay attention to it. I don't care what his ruminations are." Shelley said the only thing he really wants Ross to do is keep his promise to die. "If he's still around at 2:02 a.m. Wednesday, then I'll know that he never intended to make the family of his victims feel comfort or relief. I'll know he's a liar." Unless Ross requests otherwise, his Web page will live longer than he will, Lamourie said. Ross' page will be move to the "In Memoriam" section of the Web site if he's executed. "We're hopeful his execution doesn't take place as scheduled," Lamourie said. "Connecticut was doing fairly well for the past 40 years without an execution. We're afraid this might open the floodgates." Since death row inmates lack access to computers, Ross' writings often were forwarded to the coalition through a third party, Lamourie said. Ross' writings on the site include his favorite prayers. One reads: "Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace, where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is inquiry, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy." A few years back he wrote, almost prophetically, of his decision not to appeal his death sentence: "There is no need to drag the families of my victims through more lengthy and disturbing court proceedings." He also wrote about watching the testimony of the mothers of 2 of his victims, Leslie Shelley and Robin Stavinsky. "How do you tell them you are sorry when those very words sound so inadequate that you are ashamed to even speak them in their presence for fear of making things worse," Ross wrote. "And while I would really like them to understand what happened and why, I don't expect they will ever truly understand the insanity that drove me to kill their loved ones." But Edwin Shelley said psychologists concocted the insanity diagnosis in exchange for the fees they received. "There's no disease," the victim's father said. Ross wrote that the issue of his insanity is irrelevant. "Whether I was sane or insane can't change the facts of what happened, can't bring anyone back can't cleanse my guilt," he wrote. Lamourie said Ross' writings could help others to understand what happened. "There's one section where he makes an analogy of his illness [sexual sadism, a mental disorder] to having a constant song playing over and over in your head. As much as he wants to get it out, he can't," Lamourie said. In "It's Time for Me to Die," published in the Journal of Psychiatry and Law 6 years ago and reprinted on the Coalition's Web site, Ross described the workings of his mind. "I'm not even sure that I myself fully understand this disease," he writes. "Basically I am plagued by repetitive thoughts, urges and fantasies of the degradation, rape and murder of women. I cannot get those thoughts out of my mind." "The best way for the average person to try to understand this is to remember a time when a song played over and over again in your head," he said. "Even if you liked the melody, its constant repetition was quite annoying, and the harder you tried to drive it out of your head, the harder it seemed to stick." "Now replace that sweet melody with noxious thoughts of degradation, rape and murder and you will begin and only just begin to understand what was running rampant through my mind uncontrollably." "I could relive the rapes and murders that I committed and when reliving those despicable acts in my mind I could experience such orgasmic pleasure that it's hard to describe," Ross wrote. "But afterward, I felt a sense of loathing and self-hatred that I often longed for my execution. I was tired of being tormented by my own sick, demented mind. So unbelievably tired." He said, "these powerful urges welled up for no reason and with no warning." It once happened in a prison stairwell, he wrote, as a small, female correction officer was leading him back to his cell; he was not wearing restraints. "I was suddenly flooded with an overwhelming desire to hurt her," he wrote. "I knew I had to get out of that stairwell, and I ran up the stairs and out into the hallway. I will never forget how she shouted at me to stop. She never knew how badly I wanted to hurt her that day." After a liver disorder forced prison officials to stop administering a drug to reduce his body's production of testosterone, Ross felt a similar urge toward a prison nurse. "She always had a smile and was always friendly to me," Ross wrote. "How did I repay her kindness? By wanting to rape and strangle her. Fortunately, nothing ever happened and she never found out what was going through my mind." Ross also discusses what it was like to live on death row at Northern Correctional Institute, where the state's death row is. In October he was transferred to Osborn Correctional Institution, which houses the execution chamber. At Northern, other inmates would make the buzzing sound of an electric chair as he passed by, he wrote. Others doused him with cups of urine and feces, he claims. In separate incidents, he wrote, he was stabbed 15 times with a pair of barbershop scissors and beaten on a stairwell, sustaining injuries for which he needed stitches. "I live in a 7- by 12-foot cell consisting of a metal bunk, a desk and a combination toilet/sink. I live alone in this cell and spend 23 hours a day here," he wrote. "My only sight of the outside world is through a 3-inch-by-3-foot slot window, which has a wonderful view of the razor-wire fencing and outdoor recreation yards of the prison next door." While on death, row his meals were delivered in a Styrofoam box. He and his fellow death row colleagues ate alone, using only plastic spoons and forks, no knives. He also wrote about the hour of outside recreation he gets five days a week at 8 a.m. "We are not allowed so much as a handball and the only activity for exercise is jogging in circles on the concrete floor," he wrote. Another two hours are spent in a dayroom, where he can make 2 15-minute telephone calls, collect, each day. At Northern, he was allowed a color TV, which got six local stations; a Walkman, on which he listened to classical music; and a typewriter. ******************** Inmates' Web postings decried Wearing a top hat, white gloves and tuxedo, Daniel Webb cuts a debonair figure at the top of his Web page. He describes the page and the accompanying photographs, including one next to a Corvette, his shirt open and his 6-pack abs visible, as "a sampler box, so you can taste some of my chocolate goodies inside, that will hopefully arouse your taste buds." "So treat yourself to some of my creamy delights, and should you develop a real craving for more Danny Candies, then please feel free to put pen to paper and send with quickness your letter of introduction to me." But Webb is no ordinary single seeking love. His life these days is spent in a jail cell, 23 hours a day. He is one of 6 men living on death row at the Northern Correctional Institution in Somers. Webb is there because he was convicted of murdering Diane Gellenbeck, a 37-year-old bank vice president and former Westport resident, on Aug. 24, 1989. He kidnapped her from a Hartford parking garage, drove her to Keney Park, raped her and then shot her twice in the back. As she attempted to crawl away, Webb walked up to her, put the gun to her face and fired another shot. Webb isn't the only Connecticut death-row inmate with a page on the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty's Web site, www.ccadp.org Todd Rizzo fatally attacked Stanley Edwards, a 13-year-old Waterbury boy, with a sledgehammer in 1997 because he "wanted to know what it feels like to kill someone." Rizzo also has a page on the site. It contains photographs of him showing off the tattoo on his stomach. "I am really into piercings and tattoos," he writes. "I had seven of the former and have a large one of the latter. "I don't want money, I don't want you to hire me a good lawyer and I don't want you to help me get my novel published," Rizzo, 26, maintains. What Rizzo wants is "a friend to correspond with" preferably one "born on the third planet from Sol." "Whether you are bulimirexic [sic] or obese, pale or ebony-skinned, young or elderly male or female I will readily accept your penpal ship," he writes. Michael Ross, who is scheduled to be executed Wednesday for raping and murdering eight young women in the 1980s, also has a site. On it he discusses his illness, desire to be executed and feelings toward his victims' families. "I just hope the victims' families never see these things," said state Rep. Steven Mikutel, D-Griswold, whose district includes several of Ross' victims. "I'm offended." But, Mikutel pointed out, "This is America. We have freedom of speech. But if I were a member of a family victimized by these men, I'd be outraged." "These people are still human beings," Tracy Lamourie, a co-founder of the Web site, said of death-row inmates. Since 1998, the coalition has been offering space to death-row inmates. About 1,000 worldwide have taken advantage of the opportunity. "Many of these people are locked up 23 hours a day," Lamourie said. "In many respects, we give them a window to the outside world." She believes mostly activists opposed to the death penalty will write these inmates. "Maybe [death-row inmates] can find a lawyer who can help them get off death row," she said. "Some just want a friend to write to." But Rachel Ranis, a sociology professor at Quinnipiac University, and Mikutel believe the public would be surprised at whom would write these people. "There are lot of women out there who are attracted to guys like this," Ranis said. "It's bizarre." "Certain people are attracted and fascinated by these guys," Mikutel added. "I've even heard talk about putting these guys on bubble-gum cards." Ranis and Mikutel believe death-row inmates will get mail if their addresses are posted on the Internet. Lamourie said there are guidelines for the coalition's postings. "We wouldn't permit anyone writing about their crime or giving graphic details. We wouldn't post anything racist," Lamourie said. But she said she doesn't recall ever censoring a post, nor does she research the inmates' crimes. But after being informed of Webb's crime and rereading Webb's writing, Lamourie concedes it's "right on the edge of things." "I would encourage anyone not happy with it to write him and tell him," Lamourie said. But Mikutel; Samuel Rieger, the former head of Survivor of Homicides; and Edwin Shelley, whose daughter Leslie was one of Ross' victims, wonder whether death-row inmates should be permitted space on the Internet. "It's an insult to the families of his victims," Rieger said. "It's another dagger plunged into their heart." Speaking from the experience of living through his daughter's murder, Rieger added, "it's just another example of society caring more about the rights of murders and rapists than the feelings of the victims and their families." "Maybe we need to look at the freedoms we allow those in confinement," Mikutel said. "Maybe the prison administration needs to use some discretion on what a killer can communicate to the outside world." Stacy Smith, a spokeswoman for the Department of Correction, said there are restrictions. Inmates can't write to people under 18 without a guardian's consent or write to other inmates, except for family members, she said. Inmates can have their mail privileges revoked for disciplinary reasons. She also said prison officials will read inmates' mail if they suspect discussion of an escape, criminal act or threats to public or prison safety. Death-row inmates can meet with visitors only through glass partitions. "There's no way to pass anything through," she said. Authorities believe the Web site postings are mailed to others, who send them to the site's Webmaster. (source for both: Connecticut Post) KANSAS: Death penalty facing review Kansas' 1994 law reinstating capital punishment will undergo more scrutiny in the Legislature after the state Supreme Court overturned it last month. The Kansas death penalty law faces a trial of sorts before a jury of 165 lawmakers beginning this week in the Legislature. Last month's ruling by the Kansas Supreme Court overturning the law, while narrow in scope, has prompted the 1st full-blown legislative review of the death penalty since it passed in 1994. Much has changed since then. Fewer than 1 in 5 legislators remain from the group that reinstated the death penalty a decade ago. Seven criminals are on death row -- 6 of them from Sedgwick County -- though their sentences are now in doubt. Greenwood County's sheriff was shot to death Wednesday while serving an arrest warrant, prompting the state's top law-enforcement officer to promise to seek the death penalty in that case. The state has spent more than $16 million to prosecute and defend death penalty cases. The only thing that hasn't changed: Kansas has not executed a criminal in almost 40 years. Legislative leaders say it's unlikely the law will be repealed. "If the chief law enforcement officer in the state wants us to fix it, that removes any hesitation I have," said Sen. Phil Journey, R-Haysville. But death penalty opponents see their best chance in years to make their case. "It can't be fixed. It's very simple. More cases will be overturned in the future," said Bill Lucero of Topeka, a member of Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation, a national group that opposes the death penalty. The retired psychologist's father was killed in 1972. He said it took him five years to realize that the death penalty would not have helped him deal with the loss. "It just doesn't allow closure to occur. That comes from families," he said. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a death penalty opponent when she served in the Legislature, refuses to say what kind of death penalty bill she would or wouldn't sign. When asked, she points to the law she signed last year establishing a sentence of life in prison without parole, "absolutely ensuring the safety of Kansans." When lawmakers passed the death penalty law in 1994, that sentencing option was not available for the most heinous crimes, she said. As the death penalty review begins in a Senate committee this week, lawmakers are getting mixed messages from prosecutors. Attorney General Phill Kline advises lawmakers to proceed with a technical fix for the problem the Supreme Court cited in overturning the law. "He believes that Kansas should have a death penalty," spokesman Whitney Watson said. Nola Foulston, Sedgwick County district attorney, wants lawmakers to hold off while Kline seeks a U.S. Supreme Court review. Kline also has asked the state Supreme Court to reconsider its decision. "Any attempt by the Kansas Legislature to 'repair' the existing Kansas Death Penalty Act could be the death knell for review by the United States Supreme Court," Foulston told Wichita lawmakers in an e-mail last week. A legislative fix would not apply to those already sentenced to death. Their sentences would revert to the next-harshest penalty in effect at the time of their sentencing. "This would be a travesty for the victims of those crimes, for our community, and impose a nullification of the verdicts of those juries who with full faith and confidence in our jury system imposed their verdicts based upon the law and the evidence," Foulston wrote. Fix or change The state Supreme Court cited a statutory flaw in balancing the state's interests and defendants' rights. The law said, in effect, that if factors favoring the death penalty, such as the heinous nature of the crime, are equal to factors weighing against the death penalty, juries must sentence a defendant to death. In a 4-3 decision, justices ruled that a tie goes to the defendant under the U.S. Constitution and overturned the death penalty statute. The same court had cited the flaw 3 years earlier but said judges could handle the issue with proper jury instructions. Among the 4 bills pending before the Senate Judiciary Committee, one would fix that language but otherwise leave the law unchanged. The committee is likely to act on that bill first, said Sen. John Vratil, R- Leawood, the chairman. "The Legislature needs to fix the problem the Supreme Court identified," he said. 2 other bills prohibit the death penalty if the defendant is mentally retarded. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to execute mentally retarded defendants. The 4th bill would repeal the death penalty, substituting life without parole as the sentence. Its sponsor, Sen. David Haley, D-Kansas City, said he came to the Legislature "fully supportive of the death penalty" but has grown concerned about costs and the effectiveness of the law. "Is our society really any safer, or saner?" he asked. Rep. Ward Loyd, R-Garden City, who will lead the House death penalty review, hopes to preserve the death penalty and the sentences already handed down. Still, he said, lawmakers can't wait for a U.S. Supreme Court decision to begin their work. Among the 38 states with death penalties, Kansas' law is considered one of the most restrictive, applying to a narrow group of heinous crimes. Texas executed 23 convicted criminals last year, and one so far this year. It leads the nation with 337 executions since a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision opened the door to reinstating death penalties wiped off the books by a 1972 ruling. Despite Kansas' restrictive law, Loyd expects proposals ranging from repeal to expanding the penalty to other crimes. Journey hopes to add acts of terrorism to the qualifying offenses. "Obviously, the door's open," Loyd said. Costs and results A year-old legislative audit found that it cost state and local governments an average of $1.26 million to prosecute each death penalty case. That price tag is on average nearly double the amount spent on cases that resulted in sentences of 40 or 50 years in prison without parole. The study was done prior to the new life-without-parole law,which took effect in July. More recently, a special judicial advisory committee identified disparities across the state in applying the death penalty. Since the law was passed in 1994, Sedgwick County had 17 potential capital cases involving crimes that qualify for the death penalty.Wyandotte County had 25, according to the report by the death penalty advisory committee of the Kansas Judicial Council. Prosecutors pursued the death penalty in 8 cases in Sedgwick County, 15 in Wyandotte County. All 8 were brought to trial in Sedgwick County, while only two went to trial as capital defendants in Wyandotte County. "Thus, a capital defendant in Sedgwick County is also much more likely to receive a death sentence than a capital defendant in Wyandotte County," the report said. The advisory committee found no evidence that the race of the victims or the defendants influenced prosecutors' decisions. The committee said additional study would be needed to determine whether Kansas law ensures that no innocent person is sentenced to death. Death penalty opponents point to those disparities, and to trial court errors cited by the Kansas Supreme Court in its recent ruling, as evidence the death penalty should be repealed. Supporters, however, say death is the appropriate sentence in some cases and that legislators should not wait to see if the U.S. Supreme Court will take the case, which is considered a long shot. (source: Wichita Eagle) VIRGINIA: Unlike Conn., Virginia has few qualms about capital punishment For most Connecticut residents, having a criminal put to death on their behalf is likely a once in-a-lifetime event. Not so in the Commonwealth of Virginia. While executions here have tailed off in recent years, the state has put 94 people to death since reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976, 2nd only to Texas, which has executed 337, according to the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center. The 2 states together account for nearly 1/2 of all executions in the United States over the past 29 years. "Historically, Virginia is a very conservative state, and personal safety is the utmost," said Stanley Rosenbluth, president of Virginia United Against Crime. While Rosenbluth's group advocates for victims' rights and does not take a formal position on capital punishment, Rosenbluth does. His son and daughter-in-law were murdered in their home on Thanksgiving Day 1993. The 2 men convicted of the crime were executed by the state in 1999. "The most heinous crimes deserve the most severe punishment. These people have no regard for the value of life. People in Virginia value life very highly. And the people who take a life understand this," Rosenbluth said. Virginia, which gives inmates a choice between electrocution and lethal injection, has been a battleground over the issue of capital punishment, in particular because Virginia is one of few states that allows execution of juvenile defendants. It was the political implications of that provision that brought the trials of convicted beltway snipers John Allen Mohammad and Lee Boyd Malvo to Virginia, rather than Maryland, the District of Columbia or federal court, because Virginia could put the teenage Malvo to death for his crimes. While Mohammad was sentenced to death, Malvo was spared on his 1st conviction due to the mitigating circumstance of a troubled childhood. While Rosenbluth attributed Virginia's laws and practice to value of life and justice, Jack Payden-Travers, executive director of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, sees mostly racism and the legacy of the southern slave culture. "We were the capital of the Confederacy, and a lot of people here act like they're still fighting the Civil War," Peyden-Travers said. "The death penalty was frequently seen during slave times as a means of control." According to Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, 45 % of those executed in Virginia were African American. African Americans make up 19.6 % of the state's population, according to the 2000 census. Peyden-Travers noted that 80 % of people executed in the U.S. since 1976 have been African American. "You tell me race doesn't play a part in our death penalty down here?" Peyden-Travers said. Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, spotted an overall decline in executions in Virginia. There were five last year, as opposed to a dozen or more in earlier years. Texas, by comparison is "pretty much marching ahead," Dieter said. Dieter attributed the drop to the state's adoption of life sentences without parole, while Peyden-Travers credits the recent spate of death row exonerations - 117 nationally in the last few years - due to DNA testing. "I think more and more people are beginning to see the inequities of the system," Peyden-Travers said. Virginia General Assembly Delegate Brian J. Moran, an Alexandria Democrat, differs with some of his party colleagues on the issue of capital punishment. Moran opposed the death penalty until he prosecuted Michael Sacher for the 1990 robbery, rape and murder of 23-year-old Anne Borghesani in Arlington. Borghesani was stabbed 21 times with an ice pick and left to die in the stairwell of an office building. Sacher was executed in 1997. "Since that time I've felt it's justified," Moran said. In Haymarket, a small, semi-rural town about 40 miles west of Washington, most residents interviewed support the death penalty and pay little mind to exactly how many people the state executes. But on both sides of the issue, faith informs opinion. "I support it if the crime is murder and the person did it," said Jerry Allen, 50, a manager at the Haymarket Barber Shop. "It should be an eye for an eye, which is what the Bible says." Haymarket resident Dennis Leech also backs capital punishment. "I doubt it's a deterrent, but in Virginia, if you take a life, I believe your life should be taken also," Leech said. But Elisa Dacales of Haymarket opposes capital punishment, based on the position of her faith in the Greek Orthodox church. "I think going to prison for life, that's punishment enough. If they get released that's another story. I don't want them out on the street," Dacales said. Richard Bonnie, a law professor at the University of Virginia, said that Connecticut's scheduled execution Wednesday of serial killer Michael Ross - the state's 1st in 44 years - provides a rare opportunity for Connecticut residents. "My impression is that, in states like Texas, Florida, Georgia and Virginia, where the death penalty is carried out with greater frequency, people are less likely to think about these questions than they are in a state where executions are rare," Bonnie said. "The occasion of this execution in Connecticut should provide a genuine opportunity for the people of Connecticut to reflect on the morality of capital punishment and its acceptability as a social practice. After all, it is a practice carried out in their behalf," Bonnie said. Rosenbluth said the execution of the men who killed his son and daughter-in-law has provided little solace. "There's no comfort," said Rosenbluth, who lives in Arlington, just outside the nation's capital. "But I know justice prevailed, and they'll never do this to another family again." (source: New Haven Register)
