May 12 CONNECTICUT----impending execution//volunteer Ross Awaits Death -- New England's First Execution In 45 Years A serial killer who struggled to hasten his own death - and was forced to prove he wasn't out of his mind - awaited lethal injection early Friday in New England's 1st execution in 45 years. Michael Ross, 45, was scheduled to be put to death at 2:01 a.m. after fighting off attempts by public defenders, death penalty foes and his own family to save his life. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York rejected two last-minute appeals from Ross' relatives late Thursday afternoon but the U.S. Supreme Court was expected to review one if not both cases Thursday night, attorneys in both cases said. The appeals court rebuffed a lawsuit brought on behalf of Ross' father that claimed Ross' execution would lead to a wave of suicide attempts among Connecticut inmates. The court also rejected an appeal from Ross' sister, who asked to intervene because she claims that Ross is mentally incompetent to forgo his appeals. In Connecticut, prison officials said Ross made no special request for his last meal, choosing to eat the same dinner served to all 18,000 inmates throughout the state prison system: turkey a la king, rice, mixed vegetables and fruit. His family, friends and attorneys visited with him after he was moved in the morning to a holding cell near the death chamber at Osborn Correctional Institution in Somers. He had with him a Bible, a book of Bible verses and some candy. The Ivy League-educated killer was sent to death row for the murders of four young women and girls in Connecticut in the 1980s, and confessed to four more such slayings in Connecticut and New York. He also raped most of the women. Last fall, he announced he was abandoning all remaining appeals - which could have kept him alive for many years - because his victims' families had suffered enough. "I owe these people. I killed their daughters. If I could stop the pain, I have to do that. This is my right," the former insurance agent and Cornell University graduate said last year. "I don't think there's anything crazy or incompetent about that." Desperate to save his life, public defenders and Ross' family argued that Ross suffered from "death row syndrome" - that is, he had become deranged from living most of the past 18 years under a death sentence. Ross was hours from death in January when a federal judge scolded Ross' attorney and threatened to lift his law license for trying to hasten Ross' execution. The lawyer agreed to a new hearing on whether Ross was mentally competent. At the hearing, 2 psychiatrists have testified that he was mentally incompetent. They said he has a personality disorder that compels him to choose death to avoid looking cowardly. 2 other experts disputed the finding of incompetence and said he was genuinely remorseful. Last month, a judge again found Ross competent to decide his fate. The last execution in New England was in 1960, when Joseph "Mad Dog" Taborsky went to the electric chair in Connecticut. Of the 6 New England states, only Connecticut and New Hampshire have the death penalty. New Hampshire has no one on death row and has not executed anyone since 1939. Death penalty opponents warned that Ross' execution could break down a political and psychological barrier against capital punishment in New England and start a domino effect in the region. Some opponents have spent the week walking the 25 miles from Hartford to the prison. Bob Nave, the executive director of the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty, said they are resigned to the fact that the execution will happen. "I have had no doubt about that for some time," he said. "This has become all about Michael Ross. Capital punishment will be wrong long after Michael Ross and it was wrong long before him." Edwin Shelley, whose 14-year-old daughter Leslie was Ross' seventh victim, said he planned to watch Ross die. "It's going to be nice to come home and realize that the case is finished and that he has received his just rewards," Shelley said. "I think I will be very relaxed and at ease with myself." ********************** Death Penalty Opponents Complete 30-Mile Walk Elizabeth Brancato walked 30 miles over 5 days to protest New England's first execution in 45 years. As legal appeals failed and she neared the end of the march, the reality that the state was actually going to kill someone began hitting home. "I think we all are feeling more and more sad as the hour gets closer," Brancato said Thursday as serial killer Michael Ross' lethal injection approached. Brancato, a systems programmer from Torrington, was among more than a dozen protesters who showed up each day to participate in the walk. The number was expected to swell to hundreds of people on both sides of the issue in a field adjacent to the prison in Somers where Ross was scheduled to die. Death penalty opponents who have championed nonviolent and human-rights causes say capital punishment denies an individual's civil liberties, fails as a deterrent to crime, is costlier than life in prison because of legal appeals and risks killing innocent people. State lawmakers have debated capital punishment this year. Death penalty opponents in the Democrat-controlled legislature have said they lack the votes to override a promised veto by Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell, and few legislators wanted to be seen trying to save the life of a serial killer. Death-row inmates have also claimed in appeals that capital punishment is sought disproportionally in Connecticut when the crime involves a white victim. A two-year-old order by the state Supreme Court for hearings to determine if Connecticut's death penalty is biased remains unfulfilled. None of that stopped the protesters, who were to gather at an interfaith vigil at Somers Congregational Church Thursday night and early Friday morning. While most protesters took turns walking on different days, Brancato walked the entire distance. "When I woke up the next day and was able to stand, I said, 'OK,"' she said. "I know that it isn't going to change anything by itself." (source for both: Associated Press) ARIZONA----new death sentence Jury hands down death sentence in Mesa restaurant killings A Maricopa County Superior Court jury returned 3 death sentences Thursday for a man found guilty of executing 3 workers at a Mesa fast food restaurant in 2002. Steve Boggs bounced in his chair as the bailiff read the death verdicts; several of the jurors wept. "Death is real; so are its effects. Today Steven Boggs will be put in a box for a long time," Leon Spencer, the father of one of the victims, said after the verdict. advertisement When asked what he felt about his son's killer, Spencer said, "I'm still numb." Judge John Foreman also sentenced Boggs to consecutive sentences of 21 years in prison for armed robbery and 8 years for burglary, and 3 sentences of 21 years for kidnapping to be served concurrently. Boggs, 26, was found guilty May 3 in the robbery of a Jack in the Box Restaurant almost exactly three years ago. 3 employees died: Kenneth Brown, 27, Beatriz Alvarado, 31, and Fausto Jimenez, 30. During the trial, prosecutors painted Boggs as a racist. Boggs later told police in a letter that his motive "was to rid the world of a few needless illegals." Prosecutors said that Boggs and his codefendant, Christopher Hargrave, who has yet to stand trial, claimed to be members of a militia that professed racism. The victims were 2 Hispanics and an American Indian. The trial lasted 5 weeks, and by the time it reached the penalty stage, it grew so emotional that even the prosecutor and a defense attorney began to weep as the victims' families made statements to the jury. Spencer, who is the father of Kenneth Brown, was pensive after the sentencing. "When a loved one dies . . . it leaves you wondering , did I say 'I love you' to him?" Spencer said. Then he said that recently he found a letter he had written to his son, then 6 or 7, while he was in the military and stationed in Germany in the late 1970s. In the letter he had told his son he loved him. And he saw that his son had written right on the letter, "I love you too." (sources: Arizona Republic and Associated Press) PENNSYLVANIA: Allegheny County jury mulling death penalty in Dion Horton case A jury that convicted a West Mifflin man guilty of killing a man and critically wounding his pregnant girlfriend must now decide whether he deserves the death penalty. The jury in Allegheny County Judge John Zottola's courtroom heard the case against Dion Horton, 27, last week. They deliberated for more than three days before finding Horton guilty on Thursday of first-degree murder in the shooting of Kenneth Sharp, and attempted homicide for shooting Rasheeda Pennybaker in the face. Pennybaker survived to tell police about the shootings. She testified that she and Sharp knew that Horton had shot and killed another man, Jeffrey Nichols, as part of a drug dispute between Nichols and Sharp earlier that same day in February 2002. The jury was unable to reach a verdict in Nichols' death. Horton's defense attorney had suggested his client may have acted in self-defense in Nichols' shooting. (source: Associated Press) TENNESSEE: Tenn. Supreme Court rules death row inmate may continue appeals Death row inmate Christa Gail Pike, who once wanted to stop her appeals and be executed, will be allowed to continue her appeals process, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled Thursday. Pike, condemned to die for the 1995 murder of a fellow student at the Job Corps Training Center in Knoxville, had convinced a lower court judge that she wanted to drop her appeals. An execution date was set, but Pike then changed her mind. The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals last year upheld a judge's decision to not allow Pike to continue her appeals. The Supreme Court overturned that ruling and sent the case back to the trial judge to begin the appeals process and set a hearing. Pike, of Durham, N.C., was 18 at the time she was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer on the University of Tennessee's Agricultural campus. Slemmer was stabbed and beaten by Pike and Tadaryl Shipp, Pike's boyfriend at the time. Shipp is currently serving a life sentence without parole. The two carved a pentagram into Slemmer's chest during the attack and investigators claimed Pike took a piece of Slemmer's skull for a souvenir. Pike was convicted last summer of attempted murder for strangling another inmate, and a judge added 25 years to her previous sentence. Pike had argued in her attempt to have her appeals process renewed that post-conviction review should be mandatory for people sentenced to death even if a person ruled competent wants to waive the right to an appeal. The justices disagreed, saying complete post-conviction review is not required and death row inmates may be allowed to revoke their initial waiver as long as they are not trying to delay the process. Pike is 1 of only 2 women on Tennessee's death row. (source: Associated Press)
