Jan. 30
CONNECTICUT:
Execution Is In Legal Limbo----Lawyers Say Withdrawal Of Ross' Attorney
Would Delay Events Indefinitely
A 4th execution date has come and gone, and there is growing doubt the
execution of serial killer Michael Ross will take place as scheduled at 9
p.m. Monday.
The most recent execution countdown ended abruptly early Saturday morning
when Ross' lawyer, T.R. Paulding, said he needed time to explore a
possible conflict of interest in his representation of Ross. He did not
elaborate, but the decision came hours after the state's chief federal
judge berated his course of action and advised him in the strongest of
words to reconsider his efforts to help Ross "volunteer" to be executed.
If Paulding withdraws as counsel, lawyers say no execution could proceed -
even if Ross wanted it to - until standby counsel could be appointed and
become thoroughly versed in the frenzied events of the past 2 months.
Paulding, who now holds as much power as Ross does on whether the state's
1st execution in nearly 45 years goes forward, isn't revealing his game
plan or his timetable for making a decision.
"I have been spending a good portion of the day getting opinions and
advice, including from an ethical expert," was all Paulding would say
Saturday. He did say he began reaching out to other lawyers for advice
almost as soon as Friday afternoon's 55-minute teleconference involving
Chief U.S. District Judge Robert N. Chatigny, public defenders and private
lawyers who worked to halt the execution and himself ended.
Paulding would not say how Ross reacted as the drama that would undermine
the execution unfolded inside the walls of Osborn Correctional
Institution, where Paulding had been given an office midday Friday. He was
at the prison during the telephone conference, which began at 3 p.m. and
ended at 3:55 p.m.
Among other things, Chatigny told Paulding:
"What you are doing is terribly, terribly wrong. No matter how well
motivated you are, you have a client whose competence is in serious doubt
and you don't know what you're talking about."
"I warn you, Mr. Paulding, between now and whatever happens Sunday night,
you better be prepared to live with yourself for the rest of your life.
And you better be prepared to deal with me if in the wake of this an
investigation is conducted."
"So I don't know how anybody in your position honestly, Mr. Paulding, I do
not know how anybody in your position could be accepting of this
responsibility to proceed in the face of this record to be the proximate
cause of this man's death. I put it to you, Mr. Paulding, I think you are
way out on a limb."
Paulding's calls to experts Friday afternoon were made between visits with
Ross and conversations with prosecutors. Paulding had intended to spend
the afternoon filling in gaps in Ross' visiting schedule - prompted by the
execution date postponements and uncertainty - and monitoring the
countdown procedures.
The suspense of whether the execution would take place early Saturday
morning at first focused more on deliberations by the U.S. Supreme Court
whether to vacate a second order halting it. The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court
earlier in the day dissolved a temporary restraining order issued by
Chatigny, but issued a stay of its own.
Irregularities in the execution procedure were noted Friday night, but
were chalked up to the ongoing deliberations by the nation's highest
court. Reporters were not given information about Ross' last meal or his
last day's activities.
Word that the U.S. Supreme Court had vacated the stay came just before 10
p.m. Friday, removing the last legal impediment to the execution. In four
hours Ross would be dead, unless he suddenly changed his mind and decided
to pursue appeals still available. The Paulding factor was unknown at this
point, though transcripts of the telephone conference were circulating and
raising questions.
Inside the prison, officials met to discuss whether the execution should
be stopped. would make the call, based on input from Attorney General
Richard Blumenthal, Chief State's Attorney Christopher Morano, New London
State's Attorney Kevin Kane and Paulding.
As midnight neared, reporters were advised that top state officials would
be down to speak to them briefly, and soon. Press conferences before an
execution were not in the agencies' execution protocols.
But their appearance kept being postponed, as the 2:01 a.m. scheduled
start of the execution drew near.
Families of Ross' victims who wished to witness the execution were
gathered at a house owned by the state somewhere on prison property,
waiting to be transported to the prison. As Morano, Blumenthal, Correction
Commissioner Theresa Lantz and Paulding entered the media center at Carl
Robinson Correctional Institution, Kane went to advise the victims'
families, who had assembled about 11:30 p.m. expecting to watch Ross die.
"This is brutal," one family member said Saturday.
If the execution does not go forward, there will be a delay of at least a
month before Connecticut again finds itself on the brink of putting a
prisoner to death. Lantz may postpone an execution for up to five days
beyond the court-ordered date, which in Ross' case was Jan. 26. That
authority expires at midnight Monday.
A new execution date would have to be set by a Superior Court judge, who
is required to schedule the execution no sooner than 30 days nor more than
6 months from the hearing date.
The U.S. Supreme Court last week vacated a stay of execution ordered by
Chatigny in a challenge brought by Ross' former public defenders and
private defense attorneys Hope Seeley and Hubert Santos, saying the
restrictive conditions of Ross' confinement led him to despair and to seek
what amounts to state-assisted suicide - his own execution.
The underlying case, still docketed in federal court in Hartford, gave
Chatigny the authority to order Friday's controversial telephone
conference. It was prompted by an unusual - some say dubious - letter
Chatigny received Thursday from an inmate named Ramon Lopez.
Lopez is known to many in the criminal justice system as a prolific letter
writer. In his letter to Chatigny he claims Ross told him, through a vent
between cells at Northern Correctional Institution, that he did not want
to die. Chatigny immediately held an initial telephone conference with
lawyers in the case and sent them the letter.
Seeley sent a copy of the letter to Morano, with a request for a one-week
stay of execution to fully investigate the allegations Lopez made. This is
what prompted the 55-minute conference call in which Chatigny called into
question Paulding's representation.
Some lawyers have said the conflict isn't necessarily that Chatigny
appeared to pit Paulding's license to practice law against Ross' life, but
that Chatigny was reminding Paulding he had an obligation to not only
represent Ross but, as an officer of the court, to be forthcoming and
present all evidence known to him.
Most lawyers contacted by The Courant Saturday were reluctant to react on
the record to Chatigny's hectoring of Paulding, fearing that their
comments might annoy a powerful, chief federal district judge who might
someday sit on their cases. But privately, it drew widely varied reactions
from lawyers who have been transfixed by the high drama of Ross'
increasingly close brushes with death. One lawyer said the one-sided
conversation between Chatigny and Paulding rivaled pot-boiling legal
fiction for thrills.
Blumenthal, meanwhile, is investigating the legitimacy of the Lopez
letter.
He said Saturday that his office has hired a handwriting analyst to assist
in an investigation of the letter's authenticity. So far, he said, he has
found no records indicating that Lopez was ever in a cell adjacent to
Ross.
"There are all kinds of reasons to believe the letter is suspect,"
Blumenthal said.
Could Paulding withdraw from the case and leave Ross to say he wants to
proceed Monday? Chief Public Defender Gerard Smyth says no.
"If he were to withdraw, Mr. Ross would have to have counsel," Smyth said.
Blumenthal would not speculate on what would happen if Ross insisted on
representing himself.
"We are absolutely determined to make the criminal justice system work,"
Blumenthal said. "There is a process and there is no rush to judgment. The
process has to provide justice to all citizens, including and most
importantly, the victims' families who have experienced unimaginable
anguish and pain."
Some lawyers said the high drama surrounding Chatigny's scolding of
Paulding and the later postponement of the execution amounts to another
argument against capital punishment in Connecticut.
"This is yet another piece of evidence that the death penalty should be
abolished," said New Haven attorney Hugh Keefe. "We can't do it right.
"Here's a guy who wants to die. The state wants him to die. In the last
two weeks it's been before the United States Supreme Court twice, the 2nd
Circuit twice, the Connecticut Supreme Court twice, a federal judge, Judge
Clifford in New London. It has been postponed innumerable times.
"This guy should have been tucked away 15 years ago with life without
parole, and we never would have heard from him again."
(source: Hartford Courant)
******************
Call With Judge Leads to Delay in Execution
The execution of Michael Bruce Ross, the convicted serial killer who was
scheduled to be the first person put to death in Connecticut in 45 years,
was delayed hours after a conference call in which a federal judge
criticized his lawyer's handling of the case.
The lawyer, T. R. Paulding, announced early yesterday - little more than
an hour before Mr. Ross had been scheduled to die - that "a question has
been raised about a conflict of interest" that touched on his continued
representation of Mr. Ross.
Standing outside the prison in Somers, Conn., where Mr. Ross had spent the
day in a small cell next to the death chamber, Mr. Paulding did not
explain what the conflict was, saying only, "I feel it is imperative to
address this before his execution can proceed."
By then, the United States Supreme Court had turned down two last-minute
moves to postpone the execution of Mr. Ross, a former life insurance
salesman who would be the 74th inmate to die since Connecticut adopted
capital punishment in 1893.
State officials said they would postpone the lethal injection until 9 p.m.
tomorrow. The death warrant for Mr. Ross is not valid after midnight
tomorrow.
Yesterday, though, the Connecticut's attorney general suggested that Mr.
Paulding's conflict could mean that Mr. Ross no longer had a lawyer and
that without a lawyer, he could not be put to death.
"He must be represented by counsel," the attorney general, Richard
Blumenthal, said in an interview. "We've said to all courts, we respect
his right to counsel."
Mr. Paulding, 49, would not elaborate as he emerged from his split-level
house in Glastonbury, Conn., yesterday, unshaven and red-eyed. As he
climbed into a van with his wife, Michele, at the wheel, he said that he
would see Mr. Ross later in the day. "It may be resolved after that," he
said.
Another lawyer involved in the case, Antonio Ponvert III, who represents
Mr. Ross's father, said Mr. Paulding had spent hours talking to Mr. Ross
at the prison on Friday afternoon and evening "about the need to have
someone take an objective look at Mr. Ross's mental state, but he was
unsuccessful." Mr. Paulding then told corrections officials that he had
"serious conflict of interest issues" and that he could no longer be an
advocate on Mr. Ross's behalf for the execution, Mr. Ponvert said.
Mr. Ross, 45, has repeatedly expressed his willingness to die. He admitted
to killing 8 girls and young women in the early 1980's and raping most of
his victims before he murdered them. He was 1st convicted in 1987 and
sentenced to death for four of the killings.
He is 1 of 7 people on death row in Connecticut. No one has been executed
there since 1960, when Joseph Taborsky was electrocuted for a string of
robberies and murders. New Hampshire, the only other New England state
that has capital punishment, has not executed anyone since 1939.
The delay in the execution and Mr. Paulding's statement at the prison came
hours after he took part in a conference call with Judge Robert N.
Chatigny, the chief federal judge in Connecticut. Lawyers representing Mr.
Ross's father, Dan Ross, and public defenders who had represented Mr. Ross
in the past listened in.
The judge told Mr. Paulding, who has been working with Mr. Ross in an
effort to forgo all appeals, that "you are way out on a limb." The judge
also threatened to have Mr. Paulding's law license revoked if it turned
out that his advice to Mr. Ross had been incomplete or inappropriate.
The judge said he was troubled by a letter from an inmate, Ramon A. Lopez,
who said Mr. Ross had told him "through the air vents" between their
prison cells "that he did not want to die." Mr. Lopez went on to accuse a
psychologist and a mental-health worker in the prison system of
brainwashing Mr. Ross. (A spokesman for the Department of Correction did
not return a call on Friday seeking information about the 2 men.)
In the telephone call, Judge Chatigny said he was also concerned that a
move from one prison to another had affected Mr. Ross.
In the conference call, the judge addressed Mr. Paulding in blistering
language, saying that when he was in practice as a litigator, "My
investigation in a typical run-of-the-mill injury case would be more
comprehensive than your investigation of this."
Noting that Mr. Paulding had not questioned Mr. Lopez about his
allegations, the judge said, "If I were you, before I continued to play
this decisive role, I would want to interview Mr. Lopez myself."
Mr. Lopez, 27, was sentenced in 2003 to a 17 years on an assault
conviction. His handwritten letter to the judge was dated Monday. A date
stamp showed it had been received in Judge Chatigny's chambers in Hartford
on Thursday morning.
The 3 pages were filled with misspellings - with Mr. Ross's 1st name
sometimes as "Micheal," - and capricious punctuation. One of the other
lawyers listening to the conference call, Hubert Santos, who represented
the public defenders, mentioned a statement from John Tokarz, a retired
deputy prison warden who said that Mr. Ross's willingness to die might
have been fueled by harsh conditions on death row.
The mention of other information about Mr. Ross that Mr. Paulding had not
verified appeared to anger the judge. Referring to the Tokarz statement,
the judge said, "It makes my blood pressure climb even higher, because
obviously now it's not just inmate Lopez" who was questioning Mr. Ross's
desire to go through with the execution.
Lecturing Mr. Paulding, the judge said, "You better be prepared to live
with yourself for the rest of your life."
Mr. Paulding had insisted that Mr. Ross was sincere in his wish to die and
mentally competent to make the decision to stop the appeals. Opponents of
the execution have said that Mr. Ross is simply masking a desire to commit
suicide.
As the conference call went on, Mr. Ross was awaiting death inside the
prison, about a mile from the Massachusetts border, and Mr. Blumenthal,
the attorney general, was petitioning the United States Supreme Court to
lift a stay of execution. That stay had been granted earlier on Friday by
a 3-judge federal appeals panel in Manhattan, and appeared to mean the
state would have to delay carrying out the death warrant.
Not only did the Supreme Court side with Mr. Blumenthal, it turned down a
separate plea from Mr. Ross's father. He asserted that executing Michael
Ross would violate his constitutional right to a relationship with his
son.
The Supreme Court did not issue any comment about how the two orders were
decided. Following standard practice, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was
responsible for marshaling the other justices, since she handles cases
from the Second Circuit. The justices do not have to convene at the court,
but can communicate with each other through their law clerks, who remain
in their chambers.
As Mr. Paulding noted in the conference call, Mr. Ross has said that he
hoped his death would ease the pain of his victims' relatives and he
repeatedly waived his rights to appeal as he cooperated with the
preparations for his execution. But that did not stop legal efforts to
block the state from injecting lethal chemicals into his bloodstream.
( For transccript of entire call:
www.ctnow.com/media/acrobat/2005-01/16054124.pdf
(source: New York Times)
*****************
State postpones execution----Connecticut mulls issue over lawyer
The U.S. Supreme Court turned down 2 last-minute moves Friday to postpone
Connecticut's execution of a convicted serial killer, clearing the way for
the 1st execution in New England in 45 years, but it was delayed again
Saturday morning with little more than an hour to spare.
Michael Bruce Ross had been scheduled to die at 2:01 a.m. EST Saturday,
but shortly before 1 a.m. state officials postponed the lethal injection
until 9 p.m. Monday, after a question was raised about Ross' legal
representation.
One of Ross' lawyers, T.R. Paulding, said early Saturday that "a question
has been raised about a conflict of interest about my continued
representation of Michael Ross. I feel it is imperative to address this
before his execution can proceed."
Paulding had insisted that Ross was sincere in his wish to die and
mentally competent to make the decision to stop the appeals. Opponents of
the execution have said that Ross is simply masking a desire to commit
suicide.
Officials would not discuss the suspected conflict Saturday.
"I feel that it is imperative I take the appropriate steps," Paulding
said. He would not say what those steps were.
Ross had been awaiting death inside a prison in Somers, Conn.
Ross, who would be the 74th inmate to die since Connecticut adopted
capital punishment in 1893, spent the day near the death chamber as
lawyers made arguments in Manhattan and filed briefs in Washington.
Ross, 45, a Cornell University graduate and former life insurance
salesman, has admitted to killing 8 girls and young women in the early
1980s and raping most of his victims before he killed them. He was first
convicted in 1987 and sentenced to death for four of the killings.
He is 1 of 7 people on death row in Connecticut. No one has been executed
there since 1960.
Ross did not fight the state's execution plans. But that did not stop
legal efforts to block the state from injecting lethal chemicals into his
bloodstream.
The Supreme Court granted a petition from Connecticut's attorney general,
Richard Blumenthal, who asked that a stay of execution be lifted. That
stay had been granted earlier in the day by a 3-judge federal appeals
panel in Manhattan, and for hours it appeared that the state would have to
wait until at least Sunday to carry out its death warrant.
But not only did the Supreme Court side with Blumenthal, it also turned
down a separate plea from Ross' father, Daniel Ross. He asserted that
executing Michael Ross would violate a father's constitutional right to a
relationship with his son.
The Supreme Court did not issue any comment on the orders.
(source: Chicago Tribune)
**************
Family members of Ross' victims not surprised by execution delay
On the night of serial killer Michael Ross' anticipated execution Friday,
the brother of one victim drove hundreds of miles to honor the memory of
his slain sister.
But the parents of another victim, a 14-year-old girl, decided to stay at
home in Canterbury. They waited all night to watch the news coverage on
television. Their loved ones were 2 of the 8 young women Ross admitted to
killing in the 1980s.
While both families dealt with Ross' execution - now delayed until 9 p.m.
Monday night - differently, they shared the same desire: Justice.
____
Lan Manh Tu knew he couldn't be in the room where Michael Ross was to be
executed. But he wanted to be somewhere nearby.
So, on Friday evening, around 7 p.m., Tu set off from the Washington, D.C
area for Connecticut. His sister, 25-year-old Dzung Ngoc Tu, and her
killer were at Cornell University at the same time - she an agricultural
economics graduate student and Ross, and agricultural undergraduate. Ross
killed her in 1981. Her body was found in a gorge on the Ivy League
campus.
En route to the execution, Tu picked up his sister's former freshman
roommate from Vassar College, Victoria Balfour, who had traveled by train
from New York City to Hartford.
But the long harried trip, which involved speeding on the Cross Bronx
Expressway through New York City, was for naught. Once Tu - the oldest
brother of Ross' first victim, - arrived at the staging area for reporters
in Somers around 1 a.m., he saw everyone packing their bags.
Tu quickly learned that the planned 2 a.m. execution was off. The
45-year-old Ross would live through the weekend.
Just moments earlier before Tu and Balfour arrived, Ross' attorney, T.R.
Paulding, dropped a bombshell. Paulding, who has helped Ross for months
fight efforts to stop his lethal injection, decided to ask for an
11th-hour delay because of a possible undisclosed conflict of interest.
Tu, who said he learned only a week ago from a reporter that Ross was
Dzung Tu's killer, plans to return for the new execution date.
"I just felt, because this would be the last chapter in the story of my
sister's life," Tu said. "Also, I represent the family. My parents, they
are not in the best of health, the stress would be a lot for them. I am
the one designated to take the heat."
Tu said he was not surprised by the delay. While disappointed, he
acknowledged that his reaction was probably different from the reaction of
the families of Ross' other victims, who've endured a 20-year legal battle
over whether the killer should live or die.
"I don't feel any personal hatred. There is no hatred or vindictiveness.
Maybe, right when it happened, that's where the hatred and vindictiveness
was. But with the passage of time, that dulls the edge of that a little
bit," he said.
"The way I look at Michael Ross, it's more of like a virus," Tu added. "I
think that the small pox virus should be wiped off the face of the earth,
but I don't hate it."
____
Raymond and Ellen Roode remained at their Canterbury home Friday night to
watch news of the execution. Ross had raped and strangled their
14-year-old daughter, April Brunais in 1984.
"What is to be gained by going up there?" Raymond Roode said shortly after
learning the execution had been delayed once again.
Given this latest postponement, the Roodes - who've attended many of the
court proceedings in the Ross case - are convinced that Ross will never be
executed.
"I myself don't believe this guy is going to get it," Raymond Roode said.
His wife agreed.
"It's been 20 years for these girls who are in their graves. It's too
bad," she said.
The couple is upset by news that U.S. District Court Judge Robert Chatigny
held a conference call with Ross' lawyer, threatening his law license if
he was aware of possible evidence that the serial killer has been coerced
_ either by mental health workers or the conditions of living on death row
_ into waiving further appeals.
The controversy stems from 2 letters that were sent to the courts from an
inmate and a former warden. Also, Chatigny has said he has serious doubts
whether Ross is mentally competent to decide to forgo any further appeals
and face execution.
Raymond Roode said he wants a state investigation into the matter,
especially the last-minute letters. He believes there are "a lot of
forces" working to stop the execution.
"Hopefully they get to the bottom of this," he said.
Roode spoke calmly of his disappointment early Saturday morning. He said
he has been through this type of thing before with Ross.
"We weren't surprised," he said. "We really thought Ross would blink. It's
a strange twist. Anything is not surprising in this case."
(source: Associated Press)
*******************
Strange Timing For Death-penalty Debate----Legislature Considers Issue On
Day Planned For Execution Of Ross
Joan Ellis, freedom of information administrator for Correction
Commissioner Theresa C. Lantz, jots the names of speakers before the start
of a news conference announcing the delay of Ross' execution early
Saturday.
The chronology had always seemed a little screwy: The legislature's
Judiciary Committee was to assemble for a debate on Monday on the issue of
capital punishment, shortly after the state put a man to death.
Then came the last-minute decision early Saturday morning to postpone
serial killer Michael Ross' execution to 9 p.m. Monday. That surprising
turn scrambled prison plans, upended reporters and left the families of
his victims, once again, in anguished limbo.
But the postponement of the lethal-injection execution gave the
committee's scheduled hearing a flash of relevance. If it ends on time at
7 p.m., the lawmakers will even have plenty of time to ride up to Enfield
and join the gathering of media and execution witnesses to see in person
what it is they have been talking about.
The committee will take up a proposal on Monday to strike down the death
penalty, which was reinstated in 1976, and replace it with life in prison
without the possibility of release as the state's harshest criminal
punishment.
It is a proposal that supporters say will help the families of victims the
most by stashing sadistic killers out of the public eye and allowing the
survivors to move on with life. It is also a proposal they say has no
chance of becoming law.
"We're not taking any action other than discussing it," said Rep. Michael
Lawlor, D-East Haven, the committee's co-chairman and a death-penalty
opponent.
"I don't think anyone's arguing," he added, "that the votes are there to
repeal the death penalty."
The slow, bureaucratic grind toward Connecticut's first execution in 45
years has made capital punishment and its application a dominant issue in
the state Capitol.
A heavily traveled hallway in the complex is decorated with
black-and-white photographs of prisons and condemned prisoners.
Supporters of capital punishment, including Gov. M. Jodi Rell, a
Republican, and House Speaker James Amann, a Democrat, have called for the
execution to proceed. Others have clamored for the state to hurry the
process along.
Anti-death-penalty lawmakers have huddled in solidarity, mulling
strategies for winning over their more numerous counterparts.
One among them, Rep. William Dyson, D-New Haven, camped out on a folding
chair in the lobby of the legislative office building last week, trying to
convince colleagues to debate the execution before it took place.
But as Ross' case skidded from courtroom to courtroom in the past few
weeks, up and down the East Coast from Hartford to Manhattan and
Washington, D.C., there hasn't been much action in the halls of the
legislature.
Rell has promised to veto any repeal of the death penalty, and that would
happen only if death- penalty opponents were to pull off a minor miracle
and pass it.
Even as the eve of execution has come and gone and come again, they are
eager to debate the law that Lawlor calls "a fraud." But they see no
chance of changing it.
"We have not seen in recent history one execution having any legislative
effect in the state where it occurred," said David Elliot, the
communications director for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death
Penalty. "One execution simply doesn't change the terrain of the debate.
Michael Ross' execution would neither cause Connecticut legislators to
immediately abolish the death penalty, nor will it usher in an era when
executions are more acceptable."
But the "circus-like atmosphere" of the Ross case, he said, could have a
direct effect on the rest of the Northeast.
"It is going to hasten abolition in both New Jersey and New York," Elliot
said.
Neither of those states has executed a prisoner since 1963, and New York's
death-penalty law has been struck down as unconstitutional by a state
court. Though there is a movement to reinstate the law, he said, "We think
this is going to cause legislators in New York to question whether they
want this type of circus coming to their town."
Elliot added, "We don't see abolition in Connecticut as something that
will necessarily happen in the next 2 months. But we do see it's likely to
happen in the cycle of about the next 2 or 4 or 6 years."
All Rep. Steve Mikutel cares about right now is the next 2 days.
The Griswold Democrat represents the hometown of Ross' 2 youngest victims,
April Brunais and Leslie Shelley, and is something of a self-appointed
spokesman for their families.
"Michael Lawlor does not speak for the majority of people of the state of
Connecticut," Mikutel said Saturday. "He certainly does not speak for the
(families of) victims of Michael Ross, who almost to a person believe the
death penalty is proper and appropriate in the Michael Ross case."
Mikutel has little use for a discussion of capital punishment.
"Some people want to have this debate because they think it will make them
feel better," he said.
(source: The Day)
******************************
Lawmakers to debate death penalty
The General Assembly appears destined for another debate on the death
penalty.
Lawmakers on the legislatures Judiciary Committee are planning to conduct
a public hearing Monday on several bills to either repeal or alter the
states capital punishment law.
In addition, top legislative leaders say they expect a full debate on the
death penalty in the state House and possibly in the state Senate as well.
However, few veteran lawmakers believe that repeal of the death penalty is
likely, particularly in light of recent polls showing strong public
support for capital punishment and Gov. M. Jodi Rells promise to veto any
repeal measure.
"From all indications," said state House Speaker James A. Amann,
D-Milford, "a death penalty bill will get out of committee and, as soon as
I get my hands on it, well debate the issue."
Amann is a strong supporter of the death penalty but has promised members
of the House Democratic majority that he will allow a full debate.
Amann remains convinced that repeal would be voted down, but he isnt sure
by how big a margin because the death penalty isnt a party-line matter.
"People are going to vote their conscience," he said.
Rell is another strong supporter of the death penalty and has warned that
she would veto any repeal measure. Even repeal advocates acknowledge that
they dont have the 2/3 majorities in both chambers necessary to override a
veto.
"But I do think its healthy to have a debate like this," said Amann.
Senate Majority Leader Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, has said he believes
a debate on the issue is worthwhile even if chances for repeal are slim.
"One way or another, I think there will be a debate on this issue."
State Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven, the House chairman of the
legislatures Judiciary Committee, said Mondays public hearing will
consider both repeal of the death penalty law and changes in the statute.
Lawlor said the timing of Mondays hearing wasnt set in expectation that
condemned serial killer Michael Ross would already have been executed by
that time. "This was the earliest we possibly could have held it," Lawlor
said.
According to Lawlor, one of the changes in the death penalty law now under
consideration is a provision to require that, if a jury deadlocked on the
issue of a death sentence, the sentence would automatically become life in
prison without parole.
He said that 35 of the 38 states that now have a death penalty also have
that provision concerning deadlocked juries. "And that includes Texas,"
Lawlor said.
(source: Associated Press)
******************
Our Own Public Prison
I don't have anything to say about the death penalty that will be as
eloquent or profound as the remarkable essay by Donald S. Connery,
published in this magazine several weeks ago. And Susan Campbell's
explanation, in a column last Sunday, of how she moved from being a death
penalty agnostic to an abolitionist, struck me as more insightful than I
expect to be today.
But that doesn't change the fact that I am sitting here midweek at my
keyboard waiting for news about Michael Ross, who has been as much a part
of my adult consciousness as, say, Johnny Carson. And I have the sneaking
suspicion that January 2005 will be the month that Johnny Carson died and
Michael Ross didn't.
The comparison is not entirely frivolous. If you don't think it pleases
Michael Ross to be competing with real celebrities for headline space
these days, if you don't think he did a Randy Moss celebration in the
closet-sized end zone of his cell when he got the news that his case was
streaking toward the Supreme Court, you haven't looked closely at the mind
of Michael Ross. Imprisoned for 20 years and medicated every which way,
Ross has morphed from a bloodthirsty predator into a latter-day Rupert
Pupkin, the glitz-hungry psychopath played by Robert De Niro in "The King
of Comedy."
If you have the stomach for a short trip through the labyrinth of this
conniving, status-seeking mind, take a look at Ross's "home page"
http://ccadp.org/michaelross.htm, and you will see, among many other
things, confirmation of Ross's obsession with his own celebrity. The page
leads with video clips of TV news items about Ross and includes an essay
in which he at one point whines about how much more prestigious he was
back in the day when he was the only guy on Connecticut's death row. There
is even a curious feature from 2000 called "Walking with Michael," which
shows Ross to be sort of an early blogger. The site teems with an
unsurprising muddle of legalisms, personal observation and Ross's own
brand of Jesus-freakery (truly the last refuge of scoundrels).
The paradox is that Ross is actually kind of beside the point and almost
devoid of interesting details.
By "devoid of interesting details," I mean that a case like Ross's is more
intriguing if there is some doubt about his innocence or guilt. Or if he
is poor and black and under-educated and thus representative of the way
the death penalty seems unjustly applied in this society.
Ross, however, is white and resourceful and guilty as hell.
He really ought to be the perfect crucible for a conversation of this
kind. If you believe in the death penalty, Providence has delivered unto
you a manipulative, repulsive, vicious creep with no excuses and no charm.
He is, as people like to say, the poster boy for lethal injection.
If you believe, as I do, in abolition of the death penalty, here is your
opportunity to think about it without the distraction of extenuating
circumstances. There aren't any of those for Ross. He's just a bad guy who
has committed monstrous acts, and, if you can know in your heart that it's
still a mistake to kill him, you've pretty much scaled Everest.
Meanwhile, there's an aspect to this case that takes us from Connecticut
to Virginia to, of all places, Iraq. And there is a sense in which this
moment in the Ross case may be the peculiar legacy of - who else? - John
Rowland.
The people trying to stop Ross's execution have been arguing lately that
there may be something about Connecticut's death row that would make a
defendant give up.
"A government can't say, 'We're going to give you the death penalty,' and
then put you in conditions that are so unbearable that you don't fight,"
attorney Hubert Santos told a panel of federal judges last week.
Of course, the American government is recently, and prominently, in the
business of providing unbearable conditions. The steady flow of reports
oozing out of Iraq now tell us of a nightmare landscape of at least 30
deaths in custody, burning cigarettes in ears, horrific beatings, forced
enemas, rape, electric shocks and sexual degradation. And not just at Abu
Ghraib but in American military prisons all over Iraq.
A former assistant director of military prisons in Iraq is, of course,
John J. Armstrong, Connecticut's correction commissioner from 1995 to
2003, handpicked by Gov. John Rowland, who once criticized the state's
prisons as too much like "Club Med," an opinion he may now have occasion
to revise.
On Armstrong's watch, Connecticut ignored reports of mistreatment when its
prisoners were transferred to Wallens Ridge State Prison in Virginia.
Later, Connecticut inmate David Tracy hanged himself in his cell. Lawrence
James Frazier went into diabetic shock, was slugged with a 50,000-watt
stun gun and eventually died of heart failure. Closer to home, Timothy
Perry died at Hartford Correctional Center in a suspicious case that cost
you and me $2.9 million to settle. Some of the documents from the Perry
case read chillingly like Red Cross reports from Iraq.
This is what we should be talking about. I'm opposed to capital
punishment, and certainly the only thing worse than the death penalty
would be to have a death row that made people prefer lethal injection.
Having an inmate volunteer is a great way to break the logjam in a place
where the death penalty has been stalled for a while. And bear in mind,
Ross is not the only one to do this in Connecticut. Convicted killer
Sedrick Cobb seemed, for a while, to be racing ahead of Ross after he told
a judge, "I have made my peace with God. Let's go." Is there something
about death row in Connecticut that breaks the prisoners psychologically?
Unfortunately Ross is probably a poor prism through which to examine that
question. Our death row may drive people crazy, but Ross has always been
such a wedding cake of duplicitous, shifty, self-contradicting traits that
it's tough to get a reliable reading from him.
"Manipulative" doesn't really cover it. I apologize for the vulgarity, but
Ross is what is known, on the streets, as a "shit-disturber," a term for
which no easy translation exists.
Like an infant playing with his feces, the disturber has a compulsive need
to rearrange the pieces on the board, question the rules printed inside
the box and make the card table quiver, so that the people around him
never have a moment of clean Parcheesi.
To get a sense of the magnitude of that behavior in Ross, take a gander at
the most recent State Supreme Court decision affirming his competence and
you will see an almost dizzying array of reasons offered by Ross and by
people who know him well for his current enthusiasm for execution. These
include a desire to spare the families of his victims further torment, a
desire to end the torment of his own isolation, a desire to prove to the
guards that Connecticut really does have a death penalty, a desire to
distinguish himself from other Connecticut death row prisoners by forging
ahead instead of tap dancing, a sense of depression about his own (until
recently) waning celebrity and - this is the most confusing - Ross's
knowledge that he favored his own execution several years ago before his
psychological health deteriorated so that even though he may waver about
it now, he attributes that to a weakening of his mind and "trusts" the
healthier psyche that favored death, way back when.
On closer inspection, Ross turns out to resemble not only Pupkin but the
Tolkien character Gollum. Like Gollum, he has probably succeeded in
becoming a mystery and paradox even to himself, which makes him absolutely
unfathomable to anyone else.
So here we sit, watching the dreary tale of Michael Ross unspool a little
more and eclipse the larger questions about our state and nation. In
seeking to erase Ross, we have once again fed his supreme narcissism and
have made ourselves his prisoner, almost as much as he is ours.
(source: Column, Colin McEnroe, Hartford Courant)
***********************
Vigil turnout strong despite harsh weather
On an ordinary day children play soccer in Shaker Field, parents cheering
from its two parking lots and a giant, friendly Lego Corporation sign
beaming down from a neighboring hill.
In the earliest hours of Saturday morning, the crowds gathered at Shaker
Field had no interest in soccer or Legos. They were focused on the massive
Osborn Correctional Facility approximately one mile down the road, and the
man inside waiting to die.
Police officials established 2 separate locations Friday evening in the 2
parking lots of Shaker Field. Parking lots A and B were earmarked for
protesters and supporters of the death penalty respectively, with a heated
trailer provided in each to help activists against the gnawing, near-zero
temperatures.
Despite harsh conditions, residents of Connecticut and other states showed
up to voice their opinion about the states actions.
"I knew in the back of my head that Connecticut had a death row," said Tim
Ehra of Vernon, "but it never occurred to me that they would ever use it."
Like many others on the vigil, Ehra and his wife J.J. Lancey alternated
between mingling with others in the parking lot and retreating to their
automobile for warmth. According to the Vernon resident, Lancey had been
at home watching the news when she heard Ross execution would proceed
Saturday morning. Lancey said that she threw her coat and shoes on over
her pajamas and left immediately for the prison.
"Its my tax dollars paying for this," Lancey said, "and its wrong."
Other protesters had a far more personal connection to the execution
scheduled a mile away. Thomas Topping, a Manchester resident and proud
former Marine, joined the wait in Parking Lot A early. According to
Topping, police had once accused him of the murders that Ross had later
confessed to. Today the former Marine carries around copies of newspaper
articles outlining his struggle more than 20 years ago, and the experience
left him strongly opposed to the use of death as a tool of state.
"Right up until the day they arrested me I would have pulled the switch
for free," Topping said of his previous opinion regarding the death
penalty. "Now Im so scared that theyll get the wrong guy."
Not everyone came to express a strident opinion on the divisive issue,
such as Greg Basdagill and Andrea Kremzar. The 2 Trumbull High School
teachers joined the grim vigil in the opposition parking lot with their
camcorder to observe what they described as history in the making.
"This is a monumental event. Weve been talking about the lack of death
penalty use in the state for close to 50 years," Basdagill said. "I feel
like I have a professional stake, I suppose, more than any personal one."
The 2 teachers plan on discussing the historic proceedings with their
history and political science classes on Monday.
By midnight only a small group had gathered in either Parking Lot A or B,
although significantly more people had arrived to protest than to support
the execution. Before Saturday morning began, journalists and police
officials outnumbered protesters in both staging areas. Although very few
people ever showed up to support the execution, as Saturday morning
progressed protesters slowly filled their allotted space in Parking Lot A.
Shortly before 1 a.m. everyone in the winter morning received a surprise.
Bob Nave, of Amnesty International and the Connecticut Network to Abolish
the Death Penalty, made the announcement to the protesters, easily drawing
the crowd with his height and booming voice.
"For reasons not disclosed to us," Nave said, "its been announced that the
execution will not proceed tonight. It may proceed at a later date Sunday
or Monday morning. Were not sure yet."
Nave continued, obviously on guard against unwarranted optimism. "Its
undisclosed as to if and when, but for tonight its not going to happen. So
if you could please get into your vehicles and go home and thank you so
much for the support, but we will be in touch in the next day with
explanations and further plans if the execution were to go forward."
Supporters and protesters alike showed finite patience with the continued
delays.
Peggy Sorgio-Hdus, a supporter of the death penalty due to her brothers
murder 22 years ago, described herself as "very disgusted" with the
postponement.
"Its a disgrace," Sorgio-Hdus said of the trail of delays, "an absolute
disgrace and I feel very sorry for these families, very sorry."
Like the protesters, Sorgio-Hdus plans to return to Shaker Field Monday
night. Ross execution is scheduled to take place at 9 p.m. Monday.
Those wishing to learn more about the protest organization can visit
http://www.cnadp.org.
(source: The Bristol Press)
