May 11 USA: The justices, the soul and a culture of blood -- Can a court demand a soulful conscience on the part of a defendant and require something less of themselves? Christopher Simmons was a junior in high school when he led two younger boys to the home of Shirley Crook. They bound Ms. Crooks head and body with duct tape, shoved her into her minivan and drove her to a state park. Simmons then threw her body off a high bridge, watched her die and bragged about the killing to his friends. On March 1, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Simmons could not be executed, as a jury had elected, because he was a few months shy of being 18 years old at the time of the murder. Within the Supreme Court, it was the 5-person majoritys explicit decision to rely on their own moral judgment that drew the fiercest criticism. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in dissent, savaged the decision as being based on "the subjective views of 5 members of this court and like-minded foreigners." The majority, for its part, did not deny that it was basing its decision in large part on its members own personal moral judgment of the practice. Such explicit recognition of deeply held personal belief has been rare but powerful in Supreme Court opinions. Thirty-three years ago, writing in support of the abolition of the death penalty, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall said: "Capital punishment has been with us a long time. What purpose has it served? The evidence is that it has served none. I cannot agree that the American people have been so hardened, so embittered that they want to take the life of one who performs even the basest criminal act knowing that the execution is nothing more than bloodlust." Although the Supreme Court justices have now reaffirmed in an extraordinarily clear way that their personal morality guides their decisions at times, there is still another threshold to be crossed: the explicit recognition that their decisions are guided by their faith. Many, on the right and the left, would find the crossing of that line alarming. But why? Would we fear the honest acknowledgment that their morality may be shaped by faith? If we are at the point where a majority of the court bases a ruling on personal morality, can we honestly insist that such personal moralities be purely secular? In the end, the lesson for the judges comes from those they condemn. Very often, criminals are found eligible for death because they are "depraved" - that is, because they had no conscience to curb their actions or no engagement of the soul as a brake for murderous instincts. In fact, this was one of the jurys reasons for putting Simmons to death. Can a court at once demand a soulful conscience on the part of a defendant and require something less of themselves? I would think not. If we are to condemn killers for failing to engage their souls before killing, we must expect at least the same from our courts. (source: Science & Theology News (Mark Osler is an assistant professor of law at Baylor University in Waco, Texas) CONNECTICUT: I Really Didn't Feel Anything' These are excerpts of statements serial killer Michael Ross made to British criminologist and author Christopher Berry-Dee during a September 1994 interview at what is now Osborn Correctional Institution, where Ross is scheduled to be executed Friday. Berry-Dee marketed the interview in January, as Ross' original execution date of Jan. 26 approached. And after they were dead, I remember the very first feeling I had. My heart was pounding. I mean it was really pounding. The second feeling I had was that my hands hurt from where I strangled them. I always manually strangled them. My 3rd feeling was fear. ... I don't think I would have got anywhere near the amount of, I don't know how to describe it. I don't want to say pleasure or excitement. I don't think I would have got the same thing out it if I just shot someone or stabbed someone. ... There's nothing they could have said or done. It was me. It wasn't them. They were dead as soon as I saw them. ... I used them. I degraded them for my own personal pleasure. Which is what I needed to feed my illness. ... When I was younger I started out with fantasies that were very, they were not violent type fantasies. Mainly, I guess, the earliest ones I could remember is I would kidnap women and take them to my safe place and they would fall in love with me and not want to leave. Then when I got to college somehow they started degrading, going into more violent fantasies. That's when my rape fantasies first started, was when I was in college. I would follow women home and I would get a thrill by them knowing that I was following them. They would be scared. That gave me a thrill. Then it got to the point I actually raped someone at Cornell, and then the next person I actually raped and killed. ... When I attacked [Wendy Baribeault] ... I don't believe I was in control. I don't think I could have stopped. Reason I say that is, there's a very clear point to me after she was dead where I was feeling, well I really didn't feel anything. I knew what was going on. I saw what was going on. It was more like watching an old film that we used to see as kids in high school, I mean in elementary school, where they've been played so many times and they're all spliced and you'd be going along and it would jump. I wasn't saying I wasn't there, with that multi-personality type of crap. I was there and I did it, but I wasn't 100 % there. ... You would think that if you killed somebody you'd have that face imprinted in your mind and you wouldn't be able to get it out of your mind. I don't have that. The only face I have, the only face I can see is what was in the newspapers a few days later when they were missing. ... I don't see them as they were when I killed them. ... . I know this sounds really terrible, but I can't see them as I was killing them. Each time I killed I made myself believe I wasn't going to kill again. I always honestly believed it was some kind of fluke. I don't do this. I'm a good person. I don't hurt people. ... I always made myself believe it wasn't going to happen again. ... They've got me on death row, like that's supposed to be some big punishment. For some of us, death is not a punishment. Living is more punishment. I think I'd be very much relieved if that day ever came. I'm afraid of it. I'm worried about that day and how I'm going to act. But I think it would be very much a relief not to have to - it's not punishment. ***************************** Ross Video Exploits Notoriety There are macabre marketplaces on the Internet where the artwork, letters, locks of hair, even fingernail clippings and crawlspace dirt of notorious serial killers can be had for a price. Connecticut serial killer Michael Ross cropped up in this weird bazaar in January, as his first execution date approached. Christopher Berry-Dee, a British criminologist who did a videotaped interview with Ross in September 1994, copied his finished product and rough footage onto a DVD and began selling it on his own website, and another serial killer website, for $29, plus shipping and handling. Berry-Dee, who has interviewed numerous serial killers, would not specify how many copies he's sold of the Ross video, referring to that as "a state secret." "However, I can say that the sales have exceeded our wildest predictions and they continue to sell very well indeed," Berry-Dee wrote in a recent e-mail. Which hardly explains why the DVD this month has been discounted to $19.99 - "while supplies last" - and Berry-Dee is throwing in as a bonus a signed copy of his book, "Talking with Serial Killers." Ross has never attained the national notoriety of serial killers such as Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy or Jeffrey Dahmer, and internet auction sites have carried few items bearing his name. But Andy Kahan, a crime-victim advocate for the city of Houston whose avocation is tracking what he dubs "murderabilia," said imminent executions often present new opportunities for exploitation. "There have been a few things of Ross' for sale, but he didn't have that name recognition," Kahan said. "As we get closer to his execution and more attention will be paid to him, you'll see stuff coming out of the woodshed, people trying to capitalize on his newfound infamy." None of the psychiatrists who interviewed Ross through 2 competency evaluations in the past five months has made reference to the 1994 tape, which portrays a vastly different Ross than the pony-tailed convict featured in their recent videotaped interviews. The Ross on Berry-Dee's videotape is much heavier, and his beefy face accentuates a deep cleft in his chin. He is giddy at times as he jests with Berry-Dee, giggling as he notes, "I'm not a big serial killer by the way. 8 people - that's nothing. There's a lot of other guys you can go see." At other times, tears well up in his eyes, such as when he talks about one of his victims, or when Berry-Dee asks him what he would say to his victims' families if he could address them. At that juncture, Ross looks as if he's been slapped, and abruptly tells Berry-Dee, "No. Don't ask me that. There's nothing I can say. All that would do is make them angrier. I think it will do more harm." Berry-Dee promotes the video as "so shocking, no broadcaster would air the tapes." In addition to the DVD, several of Ross's handwritten envelopes were for sale on eBay in 1999, two years before the Internet's largest auction house said it would no longer permit the sale of killers' memorabilia out of concern for victims' families. The announcement by eBay came after several years of lobbying by Kahan and just weeks before ABC's "20/20" broadcast a segment on the practice. "This is almost a crusade on my part," Kahan said. "I just thought, from a victims' perspective, there is nothing more nauseating and disgusting than to find the person who murdered one of your loved ones now had items for sale for pure profit. It's like being gutted all over again. No one should be able to rape and rob and murder and turn around and make a buck off it." The Ross envelopes were being auctioned with bids starting at $9.99 by one of the nation's largest purveyors of murderabilia: Ken Karnig of Tampa, Fla. Karnig, in his hype for the envelopes, stated: "A difficult criminal signature to obtain, as Ross usually uses a sticker for his return address." T.R. Paulding, who represents Ross, said he learned a month ago about the sale of the Berry-Dee interview. He said that he has not seen it, and that Ross was not aware it was being marketed. After eBay barred the murderabilia items in May 2001, Karnig marketed through his own website, incorporating his trader name, "supernaught," in the address. Karnig, whose telephone number is unlisted, could not be reached for comment. "He's the main dealer right now," Kahan said. "He's got a Scott Peterson letter for sale now for $300." That price, for an item from the man convicted of killing his wife, Laci Peterson, and their unborn child, is similar to the price for letters from serial killers such as New York's David Berkowitz, better known as "Son of Sam." When Berkowitz cut a deal to collaborate on a book about his random killings of people as they sat in their cars in the Bronx and Queens in the mid-1970s, it drew outrage. New York and other states passed what became known as "Son of Sam" laws, barring convicts from profiting by writing about their crimes. But the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991 ruled that New York's law was an unconstitutional infringement on freedom of expression. Monitoring and limiting profiteering by killers is both difficult and problematic, Kahan said. He spearheaded lobbying efforts in California and Texas to help them pass what he calls "notoriety for profit" laws in the past 5 years. The laws allow the states to take from convicts any proceeds from items sold due to enhanced notoriety. Kahan is the first to concede that it is difficult to enforce such a law because any assessed value would be subjective and speculative. The law has promoted heightened vigilance, however. Kahan asked corrections officials in Texas to monitor the mail of high-profile killers for possible trading. This is how he intercepted a letter from Texas death row inmate Angel Resendiz Ramirez - "the Railway Killer" - to Karnig. It begins: "Let me know how much hair you can use." Kahan, who has worked in criminal justice for 21 years, began cultivating his unusual expertise in 1999, when he noticed an article in his hometown newspaper in upstate New York about serial killer Arthur Shawcross's art being sold on eBay, and corrections officials attempts to rescind his art privileges. Kahan said he was stunned. He went online to search for similar items "and became immersed. It's the most bizarre distribution business I've ever encountered." Kahan plunged in and began collecting. Why? "When I testified in 2001 on the bill on notoriety for profit, I had the Railway Killer's hair," Kahan said. "When you show that someone is selling his hair, it creates a more powerful impact than passing around a flier." Kahan paid $50 for Charles Manson's hair, woven into the shape of a swastika. He said he uses his own money; Houston is not billed for his unusual expenses. The weirdest items he's seen for sale are dirt from the crawl space of John Wayne Gacy's house near Chicago, which doubled as his crime scene, and singed locks of Ted Bundy's hair - post electrocution. "It's unrealistic to think you're going to stop people from collecting the items," Kahan said. "It is realistic to think we can prevent the convicts from profiting. I find the dealers more repulsive, quite frankly. Without people on the outside, the industry doesn't exist." *********************** Groark To End His Ross Effort The lawyer appointed to argue that serial killer Michael Ross is not mentally stable enough to proceed to his execution said Tuesday that he will file no further appeals. Attorney Thomas Groark said he would not ask the state Supreme Court to reconsider its unanimous ruling Monday upholding a lower court finding that Ross is competent and acting of his own volition. Superior Court Judge Patrick Clifford last month also determined that Ross is not being coerced by mental illness or the conditions of his confinement. "We feel we have advocated as well as we can for the position of incompetence," Groark said. "The court has come to a decision and we do not think there would be any interest by the U.S. Supreme Court in reviewing the decision at this point." Groark's decision to stand down is significant, but does little to stanch the flow of motions and other strategies being employed to halt the execution early Friday. It would be New England's 1st execution in nearly 45 years. Tuesday, Superior Court Judge Jonathan Kaplan rejected a petition by Ross' estranged sister, Donna Dunham, to file an appeal on his behalf. To prevail, she would have had to convince Kaplan that Ross was mentally incompetent, and thus unable to act to stop the execution and save his own life. Monday's Supreme Court ruling made it certain that Kaplan would reject Dunham's petition. Kaplan, in his six-page ruling Tuesday, noted that lower courts are bound by the decisions of the Supreme Court. Dunham "has not provided an adequate explanation why Michael Ross cannot appear on his own behalf to prosecute the habeas corpus petition," Kaplan wrote. "Having failed to present any meaningful evidence bearing on Michael Ross' competence, the applicant cannot possibly have standing" to appeal. Kaplan noted that the Supreme Court's ruling rendered Dunham's petition "without legal merit, i.e. wholly frivolous." Kaplan declined to address the stay of execution requested by Dunham's lawyer, Diane Polan. Polan asked the state Supreme Court Tuesday to hear the matter, and vowed to pursue Dunham's claims in federal court if she does not prevail at the state level. "My client, Donna Dunham, is acting in the best interests of her brother, as any of us would do for a mentally ill sibling whose life is in jeopardy," Polan said. The high court is expected to schedule a hearing on the matter sometime today. Meanwhile, Dr. Jonathan Groner, an Ohio doctor who crusades against physician involvement in capital punishment, has filed a complaint with the state Department of Public Health against the Department of Correction's chief of medical services, Dr. Edward Blanchette. He is asking that the correction department be ordered to halt the execution and discipline Blanchette for his stated willingness to train the state's executioners. Because the correction department refuses to identify those who will administer the lethal injection, Groner claims there is no way to know whether they were adequately trained, and by whom. (source for all: Hartford Courant)
