May 10 CONNECTICUT: Connecticut Supreme Court won't block Ross execution Connecticut's Supreme Court on Monday struck down another request to postpone the execution of convicted killer Michael Ross, scheduled to be New England's first execution in 45 years. Ross, who was sentenced to death in the killings of 4 eastern Connecticut women in the 1980s, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 2 a.m. Friday. He has rejected all efforts to postpone his execution, saying he wants to die. But his father and court-appointed attorneys have been trying to stop the state from proceeding, claiming Ross is not competent to drop his appeals. Ross' court-appointed lawyer, Thomas Groark, filed papers with the state Supreme Court in April to challenge a judge's ruling that Ross was competent to accept his death sentence. But T.R. Paulding, Ross' private attorney, said Ross has repeatedly invoked his right to die and his wishes should be respected. If a full round of appeals were allowed, it most likely would prevent his client's execution, he said. His relatives argue Ross suffers from "death row syndrome," in which a person's mental state is degraded by being on death row for a long period and he thinks it would be better to die. Ross has admitted killing 8 women -- 6 in Connecticut and 2 in New York -- as part of a crime spree in at least 5 states. His execution would be the 1st in New England since 1960, when Connecticut inmate Joseph Taborsky died in the state's electric chair. 4 of the other 5 states in the region -- Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont -- have no death penalty, while New Hampshire's last execution was in 1939. (source: CNN) *************************** Correction Department may be forced to disclose Ross execution details The state prison system might be forced to release behind the scene details of the execution of serial killer Michael Ross. The Freedom of Information Commission is to meet tomorrow on a proposed ruling that would require Department of Correction officials to turn over more than 400 pages of documents sought by The Hartford Courant. The newspaper wants documents concerning the training and qualifications of those who will carry out the planned execution early Friday. The Department of Correction has cited safety concerns in refusing to say who will administer the lethal injection or how they are trained. If the FOI commission approves a proposed decision, the Department of Correction would be not be required to provide the names of those involved, but would have to explain how they have been trained. (source: WTNH News) *********************** Norcott's Dissent: 'The Pound Of Flesh' In his dissent Monday in the Michael Ross case, state Supreme Court Justice Flemming L. Norcott Jr. takes aim at the protracted nature of death penalty litigation. He writes, in part: In most ordinary litigation, civil or criminal, a party's decision to accept or to stipulate to a certain result either simplifies greatly or resolves finally the proceedings. The defendant, Michael Ross, is, however, no ordinary defendant, and this is no ordinary case. This case illustrates, however, the sheer irrationality of the capital punishment system because this defendant's election to forgo further appeals or collateral relief, a decision that in any other context would lend some economy to the proceedings, has in fact spawned seemingly endless litigation over his fate. I do not dispute the need for an abundance of caution given the tremendous stakes of this case; indeed, after the execution has taken place, no court will have the option of reconsideration. These proceedings have, however, been cruel and traumatic for the victims' families and a significant part of the punishment for the defendant himself, and also have come at great financial cost for all parties involved, as well as the courts. And yet, at the end of the day, the question remains: After the execution, what will the state of Connecticut have gained from all of this? The answer seems to be that, minimally, the state has secured the proverbial pound of flesh for the crimes of this one outrageously cruel man. But now, what is to be? Has our thirst for this ultimate penalty now been slaked, or do we, the people of Connecticut, continue down this increasingly lonesome road? I opened this opinion by mentioning that my opposition to the death penalty has often been set forth in the Connecticut Reports. I close with my belief that the totality of the costs that are attendant to capital punishment vastly outweigh its marginal benefits. Hopefully, the death penalty jurisprudence reported in those volumes soon will become nothing more than legal artifacts of interest and import not to the active bench and bar, but only to historians. Until such time, however, I respectfully dissent. (source: Hartford Courant) ******************* Sister can't intervene in Conn. execution A Superior Court judge Tuesday rebuffed an attempt by a sister of serial killer Michael Ross to intervene in the case and stop her brother's execution this week, which would be the 1st in New England in 45 years. Rockville Superior Court Judge Jonathan Kaplan ruled Tuesday that Donna Dunham has no standing to act on her brother's behalf. Ross, 45, was sentenced to death for murdering 4 young women in eastern Connecticut in the early 1980s and has confessed to 4 other murders in Connecticut and New York. Last year, he decided to end his appeals and accept his death sentence. He is scheduled to die by lethal injection just after 2 a.m. Friday. Kaplan's decision, which calls the complaint "wholly frivolous," came a day after the state Supreme Court upheld a ruling that Ross is mentally competent. Ross' attorney T.R. Paulding said he believes Monday's Supreme Court ruling removed the last major hurdle. Paulding has been helping clear the path to execution, as Ross says he wants. "The issue of competence was the only potentially valid issue that would allow any of these interlopers to get their foot in the door," Paulding said. Dunham's attorney, Diane Polan, had argued that Ross is not mentally competent to make a voluntary decision to die. The harsh conditions on death row, and Ross' narcissism coerced him into thinking that death is a noble choice, she argued. Those were similar to the arguments used in failed attempts by Ross' father and the state's public defenders to intervene. In addition to the court fight, the state Department of Public Health has received formal complaints from at least 4 doctors asking it to investigate the planned execution. Three Connecticut physicians filed complaints alleging numerous medical, ethical and legal problems with the state's lethal injection procedures. A 4th doctor, from Ohio, alleges that the Department of Correction and its clinical director improperly volunteered to train Ross' execution team in the medical procedures needed for lethal injection. (source: Associated Press) OHIO: Razor found near dead death row inmate A razor was found near the body of a death row inmate who killed himself in his cell over the weekend. Martin Koliser, 32, was found dead Saturday morning at Mansfield Correctional Institution, a half-hour after guards had last checked on him. A cause of death has not been released, but state police, who are treating the case as a suicide, have said Koliser had cuts on his arm and possibly suffocated himself. A single-bladed disposable razor issued by the prison was found near Koliser's body. Koliser, of Boardman, was not on suicide watch, nor was he being treated for mental illness. Koliser had been on death row since November 2003 for killing Youngstown Patrolman Michael Hartzell, 26, in April 2003 as the officer investigated a shooting. Koliser also was convicted of shooting Donel Rowe, 23, of Youngstown outside a tavern less than 2 hours before he gunned down Hartzell in his cruiser. ************************** Highway Shooter Won't Risk Death Penalty In Columbus, prosecutors on Tuesday said they will not seek the death penalty when they retry the man who admitted to a highway shooting spree that left one woman dead and terrorized commuters. Evidence of Charles McCoy Jr.'s severe mental illness presented at the first trial would outweigh any evidence that would support a death sentence, prosecutor Ron O'Brien said after meeting with defense attorneys and the judge. "Based on what I know now, taking the death penalty out of the indictment is the appropriate thing to do," O'Brien said. A hung jury was declared Sunday after 4 days of deliberations in the trial of McCoy, 29, charged with 12 shootings over 5 months in 2003 and 2004. The defense had acknowledged he was the shooter but argued he was innocent by reason of insanity. McCoy could have faced the death penalty if convicted of the most serious charge of aggravated murder for the one person killed, Gail Knisley. O'Brien said he spoke on Monday with Knisley's relatives and said they would accept a prison sentence rather than execution. The jury was consistently split 8-4 in favor of conviction in all three votes, with 4 jurors convinced that McCoy was insane at the time of the crimes, The Columbus Dispatch reported Tuesday, citing jurors and other unidentified sources. "It was kind of like a pressure cooker," juror Charles Hagar said. "As the days went on, the pressure was tremendous." However, defense attorney Michael Miller said on Monday that a second trial would not be any easier without the death penalty. "I never thought there was a jury in America that would execute Charles," he said. No trial date has been set. Prosecutors and defense attorneys have said they remain open to negotiating a plea agreement that would require prison. If a trial jury found McCoy innocent by reason of insanity, he would be sent to a mental hospital. Residents and commuters were frightened for months as bullets struck vehicles and houses at varying times of day and night along or near Interstate 270, the highway that encircles Columbus. Knisley, 62, was killed Nov. 25, 2003, as a friend drove her to a doctor's appointment. McCoy's attorneys insisted he did not understand his actions were wrong because of delusions from his untreated paranoid schizophrenia. However, the prosecution's psychiatrist said that, despite the delusions, McCoy showed he knew his actions were wrong by steps he took to avoid capture. *************** Ohio Death-Penalty Foes Seek Moratorium 7 men were put to death in Ohio last year - 2nd only in the nation to Texas. That number - along with the fact that 16 men have been executed since Ohio resumed executions in 1999 - is being used by skeptics of the state's death penalty system to call for a moratorium, citing findings by The Associated Press. The AP's 1st-ever analysis of 1,936 capital indictments from 1981 through 2002 found that defendants were more than twice as likely to receive a death sentence for killing a white victim than for killing a black victim. Nearly half of the capital punishment cases ended with a plea bargain. The AP analysis "is just one more time we see evidence that the death penalty is neither fair nor necessary," said Sister Alice Gerdeman, president of Ohioans to Stop Executions, an anti-capital punishment group founded in 1987. The group, along with the Ohio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, on Monday urged the state to immediately stop executions, noting AP's report that the capital punishment system has been applied unevenly since it was enacted. The study also found discrepancies in death sentences based on the county where the crime was committed. In Cuyahoga County, a Democratic stronghold, 8 percent of indictments resulted in death sentences, while the figure was 43 % in conservative Hamilton County. Messages left for Gov. Bob Taft on Monday were not immediately returned. "If we're going to be in the killing business, we need to be sure we're doing it right," said Jeffrey Gamso, legal director of the Ohio chapter of the ACLU. "The only way to do that is to pause, hold off, do a study and find out what's really going on here." The House last year approved a bill that would have required a similar study of the death penalty system, but senators refused to go along. Rep. Shirley Smith said she plans to reintroduce the measure soon, the 4th time in eight years she has pushed such legislation. State Public Defender David Bodiker also called for a study, as did State Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer, who co-sponsored the death penalty law in 1981. Pfeifer, a Republican, said it is up to Taft to order such a review. (source for all: Associated Press) ******************* Unfair and unjust: Ohio needs death penalty moratorium According to a new study - the 1st of its kind in Ohio -The Associated Press has shown that Ohio's death penalty laws have been inconsistently applied since the law's passing in 1981. The study has concluded that factors like race, plea bargaining and the crime location all affect whether or not individuals would face the death penalty or receive lesser sentences like life in prison. The trend, exposed by the Associated Press, points to a major problem that the Ohio Legislature needs to address before the state executes any more death row inmates. A moratorium on executions is Ohio's only viable option until the state is able to study these trends and draft legislation that would prohibit lawyers and judges from using unchecked discretion in determining who can be sentenced to death. After establishing the needed moratorium, the Legislature should not reinstitute the practice until it can be assured that death penalty laws would be enforced fairly across lines of race and social class. In the past few years Illinois has taken similar action, and Ohio would be wise to follow its precedent. When questions about discrimination -in any aspect -are raised, the government has a responsibility to pursue measures to secure equality for all its citizens. All individuals -no matter one's personal beliefs on the death penalty -should support this action to be taken by the state. The establishment of a moratorium on executions can appease both sides of the fence: for the anti-death penalty advocates it does stop executions for a period of time and for pro-death penalty advocates it does not outlaw the current practice. All political debate aside, the establishment of a moratorium would allow the state to improve upon its legislation and ensure equal treatment under the law. Until the government can ensure equality, it must not proceed with any more executions to give all individuals -regardless of alleged crimes -fair treatment. (source: Editorial, The Post) IOWA: Death penalty is justice for victim Editor, the Courier: I agree with Matt Milner's opinion. Who thinks for one minute that the people who commit these kind of crimes think of their victim? Their vicious actions are for their own selfish fulfillment. They do not care what the victim or their families go through, it's their happiness they are after. That is what it is - Their happiness. Why do taxpayers want to spend their money giving these prisoners better health care, better dental care, and sometimes better meals than some of the Iowa people enjoy. The argument that it is more costly to excute than to keep them in prison would not be true if we didn't give them endless appeals at taxpayers' expense. I don't look upon it as killing offenders, I look at it as justice for the victim, their families, relief for taxpayers and future victims. The next election I will be voting for Congressmen who put Iowa safety ahead of arrogant personal beliefs and support the death penalty. Lori Johnson----Ottumwa (source: Letter to the Editor, The Ottumwa Courier) USA: New study probes lethal lottery of death row Why do some US murderers rot away for years on death row, while others get fast tracked to the killing chamber? The answer may have little to do with the specifics of a convict's crime, according to new academic research sure to inject new bite into the debate over capital punishment. Early results of a sophisticated computer survey suggest that whether an inmate has Hispanic origin, their age and level of education as well as the state where they are held, could dictate whether they live or die. Dee Wood Harper, professor of criminal justice at Loyola University in New Orleans, said his computer-based study of historical data predicted 9 out of 10 times which inmates dodged the killing chamber. "If you have got a machine that can predict whether a person dies or doesn't die ... and those factors really have nothing to do with the crime itself, then you have got an arbitrary system of killing people," he said. Harper, a criminologist, and colleague who is a computer specialist, fed 19 characteristics on 1,000 death penalty cases between 1973 and 2000 into the program, which mines for patterns among data. Half of the cases resulted in death, the other half did not. Once the program running software known as an artificial neural network was trained on that set, another 366 cases were input -- and the computer predicted their outcome with an accuracy of 90 %. The machine crunched its numbers based on factors including the inmate's age, race, sex, level of education, year of arrest and year of birth. But the results raised alarm because though data included the convict's type of capital offenses, it did not delve into their particular crime or quality of legal defense. Opponents have long argued that the US death penalty is unfair because it is not applied to the same standard countrywide. A murderer is therefore likely to die far more quickly in pro-death penalty Texas or Virginia than in liberal California where appeals judges are more likely to be disposed against the sentence. But advocates still dispute the penalty is unfairly applied. "A murderer whose guilt is beyond dispute receives a windfall if he commits his crime in California, but only the process he is due in Virginia," said Michael Rushford of the Sacramento-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation. "There are charitable food distribution programs which, due to corrupt management, fail to deliver food to many of those supposed to receive it. "This does not prove that food distribution is unjust." Harper is now working to perfect the study, to determine conclusively just how fair, or unfair the US death penalty really is. The research comes as the number of death sentences handed down in the United States has dipped to its lowest point since executions were reintroduced nearly 20 years ago. In 2004, 125 people were ordered to die, the fewest since the Supreme Court in 1976 put the death penalty back on the statute books, according to statistics by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Activists complain the US death penalty is cruel, disproportionately handed out to racial minorities and infringes human rights. Doubts over the quality of defense lawyers and the use of DNA evidence have prompted some states to suspend or review executions. (source: Agence France Presse) ************************ Death penaltys justice might not be so blind ----Recent work in artificial intelligence shows that prisoners may be executed for arbitrary reasons. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announcement of a new campaign against the death penalty and the U.S. Supreme Courts decision to abolish capital punishment for minors have prompted the reevaluation of the death penalty system. An article in the February issue of the journal Artificial Intelligence and Applications highlights serious flaws in a system that determines life or death. Stamos Karamouzis and Dee Wood Harper of Loyola University in New Orleans developed AI that can accurately predict - with more than 90 % accuracy - whether prisoners on death row will be executed. The AI, called the Artificial Neural Network, makes predictions without any knowledge about the nature of the prisoners capital crimes. The network, which doesnt actually have any biological neurons, despite its name, is essentially a sophisticated data spreadsheet running on Karamouzis computer. Though it might not be much to look at, the network can "learn" and make predictions based on this information. "The difference comparing artificial neural networks to traditional programming is that you do not program the machine with what to do step by step," said Karamouzis, a computer scientist. Karamouzis trained the artificial neural network to study more than 1,000 cases of prisoners who were on death row between 1973 and 2000. Half of the cases represented offenders who had been executed. The cases contained only basic demographic information such as birth date, sex, race and the year and state in which a person was sentenced to death row. These variables represented 17 different "neurons," or computer processors connected like cells in a human brain, emulating human intelligence, said Karamouzis. "It learns pretty much the way a human being learns by examining all the relationships between all these variables," said Harper, a professor in Loyola's department of criminal justice. "And we tested it by giving it an exam, so to speak." They tested the neural network with 300 additional capital offense cases, and found that the AI program accurately predicted whether these additional prisoners would be executed 92 percent of the time. "It has nothing to do with the heinousness of the crime or the aggravating or the mitigating circumstances of the crime," said Harper. "It tells me that overall the process is very arbitrary. If we can predict this, then clearly the decision to execute or not execute doesnt flow from the crime itself," he said. Harper did not set out to question the death penalty. "I started casting around to find something to test this neural network," he said. He settled on capital punishment in part "because of the nationally growing debate regarding the fairness of the [death penalty] system in light of recent revelations about DNA testing." Harper said he doesn't support the death penalty, but he doesn't address his opinions from a theological perspective. "I'm not a particularly religious person," he said. "You'll probably never see me petitioning at Angola penitentiary up here or participating in a candlelight vigil." He's said hes more concerned about the judicial systems impartiality. However, the current technology cant be used to argue in court during a post-conviction appeal. "The science isnt there yet," said Harper. For example, a lawyer couldn't "plug this person into this little black box, and show the jury or the judge in an appeal situation, and say this man isn't being executed because he committed a heinous crime; hes being executed because hes male and he was born in 1955." The justice systems lack of neutrality is raising concern outside Harper's lab. "People ought to be disturbed by the findings," said Susan McGraugh, an assistant clinical professor of law at Saint Louis University in Missouri - another state, like Louisiana, which sanctions the death penalty. McGraugh, who is also a public defender, said that the technology is "interesting if its used the right way." She said she was worried that people might misuse the technology. "I am concerned that someone might use this kind of research to say, 'Well then, next, let's predict future dangerousness of criminals. If we can teach a computer who is executed and whos not, then lets figure out whos going to be dangerous and use that in the capital arena.'" Saint Louis University, a Jesuit institution, represents a part of a growing subset of Catholic institutions that are concerned about the fairness of the death penalty system. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops opposition to capital punishment, first stated in 1974, was reinforced in a major 1980 policy paper and other pronouncements since then. "We cannot teach that killing is wrong by killing. We cannot defend life by taking life," said Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the Washington archbishop, speaking at a March conference on the Catholic Churchs new campaign against the death penalty. McGraugh said that no matter what action the 36 states that currently permit capital punishment take, it must be fair from an ethical and legal standpoint. "We're concerned with social justice. Were not pro-criminal defendant or anti-victim," said McGraugh. "But we want to see that the results are just. That if the death penalty is going to be applied, it is going to be applied fairly across the board." Harper and Karamouzis are working to reduce the number of neurons the network needs to still be as accurate as a network with 17 variables. "That's where the utility is," said Karamouzis, "knowing the exact variables that predict the outcome." Both Karamouzis and Harper said they believed that a variable like race would be much less influential to the network than the neurons for the state of sentencing and the year of sentencing for the capital offense. "One of the biggest factors is how long you've been on death row," said Harper, adding that some prisoners have sat in isolation off the green mile for 14 to 16 years. "You get to 14 years and youre still there? You're in trouble, especially if youre in Texas, Virginia or Florida," he said. "I think what state you're in has a huge amount of influence on what happens," said McGraugh. "Some states are just more likely to seek death. There's a hugely disproportionate amount of inmates on death row in Texas." The ethical and legal problem the network shows, said McGraugh, is "if you're more likely to get executed if you're from Texas than Missouri, then that violates equal protection under the law." Though Harper said he wasnt sure when the data on the revised AI network would be released, he said he was encouraged by these initial steps. "If you can develop some hard, empirical facts to show that this isn't fair, then you're really winning the battle. We're not wringing our hands and going on. We're saying, 'Here are the facts. This is the way it works,'" said Harper. "That goes a lot longer way to making a difference." (source: Science & Theology News)--Julia C. Keller is science editor at Science & Theology News)
