Feb. 3 CONNECTICUT: Republican Leaders Want Congressional Probe Of Federal Judge 5 top Republican state lawmakers on Wednesday asked Congress to investigate a federal judge's handling of appeals that eventually led to the postponement of Michael Ross' execution. The legislators claim U.S. District Court Judge Robert Chatigny crossed the line last week when he threatened to revoke the law license of the serial killer's lawyer during a telephone conference. They claim Chatigny also acted inappropriately by ignoring a U.S. Supreme Court decision that lifted the stay of execution, in order to get the result he wanted: a delay of Ross' execution. "No one person is above the law. That applies to federal district judges as well as everyone else," said House Minority Robert Ward, R-North Branford, a private attorney. The legislators also called on Chatigny to recuse himself from the case. Ward said it's clear from reading a transcript of the 45-minute telephone conference that Chatigny has his own opinions on the matter. A court clerk in Chatigny's Hartford office said Wednesday afternoon that the judge did not want to comment on the matter. Chatigny was appointed to the federal bench in 1994 by former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. Both Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and Chief State's Attorney Christopher Morano have said they are troubled by Chatigny's phone call and were considering legal options. But they would not comment on the lawmakers' letter. Chatigny called Ross' attorney, T.R. Paulding, on Friday, hours before the execution was to take place and told the lawyer he was "terribly, terribly wrong" for helping Ross to die. The judge repeatedly warned Paulding to take new evidence about Ross' psychological competency seriously or else, "I'll have your law license." Hours later, Paulding asked state officials to put the brakes on the execution, saying he needed time to consider whether he had a conflict of interest in the case. Paulding later requested and received a stay of Ross' execution from the state Supreme Court. The lawyer said he wants to further investigate whether Ross suffers from a phenomenon called death row syndrome after 2 decades of living in harsh conditions. Senate Minority Leader Louis DeLuca, R-Woodbury, said the U.S. Supreme Court and other courts have already determined Ross is competent to decide to forgo further appeals. "This judge says, 'Oh that doesn't matter, only what I feel matters,"' DeLuca said. "And I don't believe any judge is above the Supreme Court of the United States." No new execution date has been set for Ross, who has admitted to killing eight young women in eastern Connecticut and New York during the early 1980s. Ward said Chatigny's rebuke of Paulding put him in a difficult position, possibly in a conflict of interest with his client. New London County Chief State's Attorney Kevin Kane has asked Superior Court Judge Patrick Clifford to investigate whether a conflict exists. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday at 2 p.m. U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, R-2nd District, planned to hand deliver the lawmakers' letter to U.S. Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. "I commend my colleagues in the Connecticut General Assembly for their efforts to seek reasonable closure on this terrible matter," said Simmons, who represents eastern Connecticut. Not everyone is upset by Chatigny's actions. Jim Nugent, an attorney for Ross' father Dan, praised the judge's handling of the case. "Chatigny showed how courageous he was," Nugent said. "Any one who criticizes Judge Chatigny does not know the full facts of the case. He was courageous to care enough to be proactive in this case." Connecticut House Majority Leader Christopher Donovan, D-Meriden, said Chatigny upheld the law and rightfully drew attention to Ross' alleged mental incompetence. In fact, a state psychiatrist who had initially examined Ross and determined him to be competent now believes he may have come to a different conclusion had he had access to Ross' writings. "He was courageous in upholding the law," Donovan said of Chatigny. "It would have been the easy thing just to let it go." (source: NBC 30) ******************** Sometimes, a condemned man says he wants to die quickly when he does not have the legal competency to mean what he says. The week's tortuous saga surrounding the planned execution of convicted murderer Michael Bruce Ross throws sharp light on a part of the capital punishment process that often unfolds in secrecy. What responsibility does a lawyer have to the court, and to the justice system, when his capital client says he wants his appeals stopped and his execution hastened? What responsibility does the judge have in a case like that? What about the condemned man? What happens when those responsibilities conflict? And is the system even set up to properly handle these sorts of life-or-death questions? The center of the storm is Ross, who confessed years ago to killing eight women. He was sentenced to death in Connecticut for four of the murders and had insisted for the record for more than one year that he wished to die and wanted no further appeals filed on his behalf. Taking Ross at his word, Connecticut dutifully scheduled his execution for this past weekend and, for a time last week, it appeared that Ross would be the 1st person executed in the Constitution State in 45 years. Then, a series of remarkable, dramatic events unfolded, leaving Ross' execution in limbo, a judge perturbed, prosecutors and the victims' families perplexed, and death penalty experts pondering the meaning of it all. First, Ross' father tried to stop the execution by claiming that his son's death would violate his constitutional right to have a relationship with a family member. The United States Supreme Court quickly rejected that appeal. And it quickly overruled a lower appeal panel that had stayed Ross' scheduled execution to determine whether he was competent to waive his rights. When that happened, and with the clock ticking toward the execution, the judge in the case, Chief U.S. District Judge Robert N. Chatigny, called Ross' attorney, T.R. Paulding, and read him the riot act. Paulding, it seems, had discounted the possibility that his client might now be incompetent to legally waive any further appeals. There is nothing inherently unusual about a death row inmate wanting to expedite his own execution. Many capital offenders decide for one reason or another to forgo their appeals in order to "escape" the misery of death row. In most of these cases, the competency of the inmate to make this call is unquestioned. The lawyer, convinced that the condemned man's waiver of his appeal rights is "knowing" and "voluntary," signs off on it and the judge overseeing the case does as well, usually after a colloquy in which the judge asks the offender a number of questions designed to ensure competency. The Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, is probably the best-known example of a death row inmate who expedited his own death by ordering a halt to all of his appeals. But sometimes, a condemned man says he wants to die quickly when he does not have the legal competency to mean what he says. Sometimes, "death row syndrome" kicks in and a capital offender, under duress, just decides to give up and commit suicide by inaction. Sometimes, the prisoner decides he or she is going to toy with counsel and the courts by zig-zagging back and forth between waiving appeals and trying to pursue them. And, sometimes, a man gets put on death row even though his competency was suspect long before his trial. The Constitution requires the government to ensure the competency of a person before execution. But how that happens isn't always neat and pretty. In Ross' case, Paulding for a long time went along with his client's death wish even though competency questions had come up before in the case. But last week, just days before Ross was to be executed, Paulding and Judge Chatigny became aware of a letter written by Ramon A. Lopez, one of Ross' fellow inmates. Lopez wrote that Ross had told him "through the air vents" between their cells that he did not want to die. Lopez also accused medical officials at the prison of "brainwashing" Ross. Moreover, a forensic psychiatrist who had found Ross competent in early January suddenly changed his mind and suggested that Ross perhaps wasn't. Meanwhile, Ross had written to a freelance journalist suggesting that he didn't want to die because it would have negatively affected his lawyer, Paulding. Torn between his client's wishes and these new developments, Paulding did not immediately use the Lopez letter as an excuse for re-opening the competency issue. And that ticked off the judge. In an extraordinary telephone session, Judge Chatigny told Paulding: "you are way out on a limb" and threatened to have the lawyer's license revoked if it turned out that Paulding had misadvised Ross about competency issues. "If I were you," the judge warned Paulding, "before I continued to play this decisive role, I would want to interview Mr. Lopez myself." If you are wrong, the judge added, "you better be prepared to live with yourself for the rest of your life." I have never heard of a judge speaking to a lawyer like that in a capital case and neither did any capital-case attorneys I talked to about this story. Not surprisingly, Paulding heeded the judge's advice. After contemplating a withdrawal from the case, which would have stopped the execution in its tracks on procedural grounds (the state cannot execute a man who is not represented by counsel), Paulding decided instead to ask both the federal and state courts involved for a stay of execution in order to determine whether Ross has "death row syndrome." After filing the motions, Paulding said in a statement: "New and significant information has come to light that I simply cannot ignore." The execution of Michael Bruce Ross, scheduled initially for last weekend, now is on indefinite hold. To its credit, Connecticut prosecutors have endured this messy to-and-fro with a great deal of patience and respect. Unlike prosecutors in other jurisdictions, they did not immediately jump all over Ross or his attorney when it became clear that there were problems. Instead, they publicly stated that Ross had to be represented if he were to be executed and that the judicial process had to play itself out in full. Judge Chatigny, meanwhile, isn't saying anything. He declined to comment for this story. Lawyers around the country, however, are scratching their heads about the threats he made to Paulding; especially the threat about taking his law license (which federal judges cannot unilaterally do). Several attorneys I talked to for this story asked me why the judge simply didn't order a new competency review himself, since he was authorized to do so whether Paulding approved of it or not. But even the judge who pushed Paulding to change his mind played a supporting role in the week's drama. It was Paulding and his client who were at the center of it all. What do other defense attorneys think about the role the lawyer played in the week's events? What do they think about the judge's hands-on approach? The comments below highlight just how tricky is the relationship between the condemned and their counsel; a relationship that necessary must touch upon the hard edges of the law even as it brings out emotions swollen with life and death considerations. "I don't think lawyers should advocate the death of their clients any more than physicians should participate in executions," David Ruhnke wrote me in an e-mail for this story. Ruhnke, a noted attorney now representing one of the defendants in the Lynne Stewart "terrorism" case in New York, revealed that his defense team colleagues once chronicled "25 changes of position" for one of his former death row clients. "No one should be executed because their wish to die happened to coincide with a court appearance." Not so, says Nathan Chambers, the defense attorney who represented McVeigh during his aborted appeals process and who was with the bomber when he was executed in Terre Haute, Indiana, in June 2001. Chambers told me that he thinks that lawyers who fight to keep their unwilling clients in the appellate process are "imposing their own ethical and moral judgments on the client." He says he respects the client's autonomy, even if that means doom for the client. "I will persuade the client to fight (on appeal) but if, at the end of the day, the client is making a knowing and intelligent decision in the eyes of the law, the lawyer has an obligation to respect the wishes of his client." The question in the Ross case, of course, was whether his decision indeed was "knowing" and "intelligent." Jonathan Shapiro, the Virginia attorney who represented sniper John Allen Muhammad during his 2003 trial and who has represented other capital defendants, told me that the sort of "client-centered" advocacy that Chambers follows works fine except in capital cases. "Death is different," Shapiro says. Condemned prisoners too often are in "no position to be making decisions" and when that happens it is up to the attorney to try to "preserve life." There is a school of thought, in Shapiro's view, that indicates that no man could be competent to agree to his own execution while living on death row. That's a standard that isn't likely to gain much traction within an increasingly-conservative federal judiciary. So there you have it. Three excellent attorneys with more than 3 different views of the dilemma Paulding faced and still faces with his client. There are no easy answers when it comes to dealing with a death row inmate who wants to stop fighting his fate. There are decisions that are made every day within the criminal justice system that have an enormous impact upon the way law and justice are handed out; decisions that cut to the core of the lawyers who must make them. Sometimes we see and hear about those decisions when they are made. Sometimes we don't. This time we did and, so far, Ross is the big winner -- he's alive today, after all, days after he was scheduled to die. (source: Andrew Cohen, for CBS News) *********************** Death Penalty Can Shake Convictions We can't bear to execute one man, yet we boldly sentence another to death. And all on the same day the legislature's judiciary committee hears hours of debate on whether the state ought to have a death penalty at all. Clearly, it's not an easy call. At the Legislative Office Building this week, supporters on each side presented poignant reasons why the death penalty should be abolished or why it should be preserved. The mother of a murdered Waterbury police officer reminded the legislators that while she grew older, her son would forever be 34. A man who was sentenced to die in the electric chair before he was found wrongfully convicted reminded them of the frightening possibility of killing innocent people in the name of justice. And two of the state's top lawyers on opposing sides of the death penalty presented equally compelling arguments. And isn't that what makes the debate over capital punishment so difficult? If we're honest with ourselves and don't cling blindly to vengeance or morality, it is possible to see both sides. It is possible to understand why someone would believe that to kill in the state's name is to chip away at its humanity. But it is also possible to understand why it might be the only acceptable justice for victims' families. Especially if, however briefly, we allow ourselves to imagine the horror of what it might be like if it were our child who was killed, our child's killer being allowed to live. I was talking about the death penalty last week with state victim's advocate James Papillo. He thoughtfully explained why his beliefs do not allow him to support capital punishment, and why his experience with victims' families has shown him that often when they cry out for an end, it is an end to the long, torturous judicial process that they want. And then his daughter came downstairs, a pretty young girl clearly adored by her father. "You know, I look at her and think, what would I do if it were her, I think who am I? I'd like to think that I would hold on to my convictions," he said. "But who knows?" Bud Welch does. Welch recalls when, during lulls at his Oklahoma gas station, he and his pals would debate the latest execution highlighted in the papers. Always his friends would bait the staunch opponent of the death penalty with the question: What if it was your daughter? And always, Welch would say he really believed that he would still oppose capital punishment. And then Julie, his only daughter, was killed with 167 others in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and Welch wanted blood. He remembers watching Timothy McVeigh being led out of the Noble County, Okla., courthouse in chains and an orange jumpsuit, and hoping and praying that there was someone in the trees with a gun aimed at his head. Nothing except McVeigh's death would end his pain, he thought, nothing except the execution of his daughter's killer would unchain him from despair and booze. And then, nearly a year after the bombing, he found himself across the street from the site of the federal building where his daughter died, asking himself what McVeigh's and Terry Nichols' executions would do for him. Would they bring me peace, he remembers asking himself, would they bring me anything close to what I need in order to live with Julie's death? He laughs when I ask him if he found the answers that day, if it was his faith that led him back to his convictions. "Can't blame everything on Catholicism," he joked. And no, he said, there was no big epiphany that day. It took time, and recalling his daughter's own beliefs, to bring him to a place that has made him one of the best-known anti-death penalty advocates. He recalled the anti-death penalty club his daughter had started at her high school, the conversation they had on their way back home from college. They were listening to a news report about an execution in Texas on the radio when Julie said, "Dad, that makes me sick what they're doing down in Texas." And he remembered the unlikely moment when he found his way back to his convictions. He was watching McVeigh's father being interviewed on television and recognized the look on his face, in his eyes. "It was the look of a parent grieving for the loss of their child," he said. "It was what I saw every time I looked in the mirror." Many people couldn't understand how he could befriend McVeigh's father. Many still can't understand how he could stand against the very fate that, whether he wanted it or not, met his daughter's killer. But, Welch said, that's because they weren't there after McVeigh was killed, when the headlines had moved on to the next execution, and many of the families who insisted nothing but McVeigh's death would suffice found their way back to him. McVeigh's execution didn't end their pain, they told him, and it didn't help them heal. They are still trying to find their way to their own peace. (source: Column, Helen Ubias, Hartford Courant) ********************* Connecticut Debates a Death Wish----A convicted serial killer has his execution postponed against his will. The delays anger many in the state. 5 times in 6 days, Michael Bruce Ross was minutes away from death by lethal injection. Execution postponements are routine while death row inmates appeal their fates. But Ross stands out because he refused to pursue legal avenues that might prolong his life. The 45-year-old serial killer has said - over and over - that he wants to die. The delays have roiled this state, where polls show most residents support capital punishment. "If they put this to a vote of the people of Connecticut, 80% to 90% would say: 'Execute him now,'" said Gene Smith, owner of Judy's Country Store in Stafford. "He killed people. He killed eight people," Smith said. "I think what they should do is put it out to bid on who would like to give him the lethal injection. I'd be right up there." Most of Ross' victims, who ranged in age from 14 to 25, had been raped before they were killed. Ross, a Cornell University graduate who confessed to murdering eight young women in Connecticut and New York in the early 1980s, fired the public defense lawyers who wanted to fight his death sentence. He bypassed appeals that might have kept him alive another 10 years or more. He even planned his funeral, hoping it would take place in the spring, when the weather would be better for mourners. But a federal judge Monday stopped the clock on what was scheduled to be New England's first execution in 45 years. U.S. District Judge Robert N. Chatigny said he was troubled by previously overlooked evidence that suggested Ross was not mentally competent. Chatigny said material indicating that Ross was suffering from despair brought on by harsh death row living conditions had not been properly investigated. "I see this happening, and I can't live with it myself," Chatigny said in a telephone conference Friday with Ross' lawyer, T.R. Paulding. Transcripts of the call were made available by the court. In the call, Chatigny chastised Paulding for going along with Ross' wish to die. "What you are doing is terribly, terribly wrong," the judge said. "No matter how well motivated you are, you have a client whose competence is in serious doubt." Paulding did not return calls to his office for comment. Ross was first scheduled to die Jan. 26. But a fast-paced series of court challenges put the execution on hold. He was about an hour from execution - at 2:01 a.m. Saturday - when his lawyer requested a postponement, citing a "potential conflict of interest" in his representation. He did not elaborate. The execution was rescheduled for 9 p.m. Monday. But that date was canceled after Ross agreed to have his competency examined. Now prosecutors must prove that the former insurance salesman is mentally competent, and the state must seek a new death warrant. The process could move any decision on executing Ross into March, or later if the appeals process drags out. Connecticut Atty. Gen. Richard Blumenthal has promised to move forward with execution plans. "This state is prepared to enforce a lawful sentence and conviction, and assure justice for the victims' families and state citizens," he said. Blumenthal said a hearing would take place today to determine whether Paulding would be permitted to continue as Ross' lawyer. The heinous nature of Ross' crimes was one reason Kathleen Lisiewski was impatient for the execution to proceed. "I am a proponent of the death penalty, especially in the case of serial killers," said Lisiewski, manager of the Travelers Book Cellar in Union. Lisiewski said she advocated "a limit on the number of years that anyone can be on death row," adding: "The emotional toll that this case is taking on everyone involved - the victims' families, Ross' family and Ross himself - is just beyond the pale." Pat Jones, presiding over a going-out-of-business sale at her gift shop in this town in northern Connecticut, expressed concern for the victims' families and irritation with the process that had prolonged Ross' life. Ross has issued several statements in recent years, claiming he thought his death would provide solace to the families of his victims. But in a 1998 letter to a journalist, he elaborated on his motive for seeking to be executed. "The truth is I was driven more by a desire to end my own pain than out of a noble cause," Ross wrote. "However, I knew that I couldn't say that publicly, so I denied my own desire to leave this world and played on the noble cause of protecting the families of my victims." In a letter in 2003 to some of his supporters, Ross wrote: "I now understand why 12% of the men executed in this country were men who gave up their appeals and 'volunteered' for execution. If I can ever get past the mandatory state appeal, I will do it myself." Ross has been in prison for 21 years, 18 on death row. He is one of seven people on death row in Connecticut, where no one has been executed since 1960. (source: Los Angeles Times) USA: DEATH PENALTY--His Case for Equal Justice During his 6 years as governor of Texas, George W. Bush signed death warrants for 152 convicts and granted clemency once. His record - along with that of the Texas justice system - long has been decried by death penalty opponents and human rights groups. In his State of the Union message Wednesday, President Bush took a modest step toward acknowledging criticism that the legal process in some death penalty cases could be flawed and that some defendants - many of them minorities - lacked adequate legal representation. "Because one of the main sources of our national unity is our belief in equal justice, we need to make sure Americans of all races and backgrounds have confidence in the system that provides justice," Bush said. He proposed a $50-million, three-year program to help train defense lawyers, prosecutors and judges in state capital cases in the proper application of laws. The goal, according to a White House fact sheet, is to "help ensure the competence and effectiveness of all participants connected with the trial of state capital cases." But $50 million is a small sum in federal budget terms. Although Bush said he would seek $20 million of that money in the fiscal 2006 budget, many states may get only a few hundred thousand dollars. The death penalty is legal in 38 of the 50 states. Bush also called for full funding of his DNA initiative, a $1-billion plan announced 2 years ago and intended to eliminate a huge backlog of unprocessed DNA evidence in criminal cases. As governor of Texas, Bush followed a law-and-order program, signing legislation that placed curbs on death penalty appeals, even though some defendants in the state were represented by incompetent lawyers. (source : Los Angeles Times) INDIANA: State sets March 10 execution at prison The Indiana State Prison has been given orders to execute a man convicted of quadruple murder in March. Donald Ray Wallace, 47, of Evansville, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on March 10. Wallace was convicted of murdering an Evansville family of 4, while in the process of burglarizing their home. All of the victims - Patrick Gilligan, 30, his wife Teresa, 30 and their 2 children Lisa, 5, and Gregory, 4 - were found tied up and each had been shot in the head. The murders were committed on Jan. 14, 1980, and Wallace was not tried for nearly two years after he was found incompetent and confined in a mental hospital. He received a sentence of death for each member of the Gilligan family, and was sentenced on Oct. 21, 1982. Joseph L. Trueblood was the last person executed at the Indiana State Prison, on June 12, 2003. Wallace has sought to end efforts to block his execution. The setting of the execution date Monday followed a decision by the high court for the fourth time to reject appeals of Wallaces sentence. Defense attorney Sarah Nagy said she was researching a possible appeal based on the grounds that too much time had elapsed for Wallace to be rightfully executed. Nagy said she was discussing an appeal with Wallace, but would not file a motion without his permission. (source: Gary Post-Tribune) CALIFORNIA: Split Court Clears Way to Execute L.A. Gang Founder A divided U.S. appeals court declined on Wednesday to reconsider a death penalty verdict against the founder of a notorious street gang turned peace advocate, making possible his execution later this year after a quarter-century delay. Stanley "Tookie" Williams, the black founder of the Crips gang in Los Angeles, was convicted in the 1979 murders of a convenience store clerk in a $120 robbery and of a woman and her parents in a motel robbery in which he stole $50. An all-white jury convicted him on four counts of 1st-degree murder and 2 counts of robbery in 1981 and imposed the death penalty. Since then Williams has filed a long series of legal challenges as well as written a series of books urging youth not to get involved with gangs. The Cannes Film Festival last year screened a drama about his life starring Jamie Foxx. On Wednesday, a majority of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to allow a 11-judge en banc group to reconsider an earlier ruling from a 9th Circuit 3-judge panel. The decision produced a relatively rare dissent, with 10 judges in favor of rehearing the case en banc. "In this a case, a prosecutor, publicly castigated by the Supreme Court of California for his pattern of racially motivated peremptory jury challenges, removed all blacks from Williams' jury," Judge Johnnie Rawlinson wrote in his dissent. "In declining to take this case en banc, our court bestows an implicit imprimatur upon the trial court's denial of a constitutionally mandated jury selection process." "The very legitimacy of our system of justice depends upon continued vigilance against such practices," wrote Rawlinson, who was joined in his dissent by nine other judges. The court majority, whose numbers were not specified, did not provide any reasoning for their decision to decline to rehear the case, as is customary in such orders. The 9th Circuit order means that Williams could be executed as early as this summer, said Dane Gillette, California's senior assistant attorney general who oversees death penalty cases. The last hurdle would be an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, he said. California executed its 1st prisoner in 3 years last month. Long legal reviews typically result in 2-decade-long delays before executions take place at San Quentin prison north of San Francisco. Williams has renounced his gang past, has appeared on national television programs, and has an Web site promoting his books. "I pray that one day my apology will be accepted," he writes on Tookie.com. "I vow to spend the rest of my life working toward solutions." (source: Reuters)
