May 14
CALIFORNIA:
9th Circuit Hears Debate on Judicial Power Issue ---- Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act requires judges to defer to state courts in
habeas reviews
A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reignited the
long-simmering frustration among federal judges over a 1996 law that
requires them to defer to state courts even in the face of constitutional
errors.
With only a week's advance notice and no briefing, 2 judges asked lawyers
to be prepared to address during arguments whether a portion of the
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 unconstitutionally
intrudes on the separation of powers.
The appeals panel ruling after a hearing last week could affect dozens of
capital cases challenging the loss of their state habeas claims, as well
as hundreds of noncapital cases in similar positions.
The issue that has galled a number of judges over the last decade was
2254(d)(1) of the law, which limits their ability to grant habeas relief
in appeals of state judgments. Federal judges had to turn a blind eye,
even if they find constitutional errors, so long as the state court that
upheld the conviction did not engage in an "unreasonable application of
clearly established federal law."
"It is one of the most incomprehensibly worded laws in the history of
Congress," said Alan K. Chen, a constitutional law professor at the
University of Denver Sturm College of Law. "The federal court can't review
even if the state did it wrong, as long as the [state court's] mistake was
reasonable," he said.
Resurrecting the constitutional question was a bold move by judges Stephen
Reinhardt and John Noonan because many observers considered it a dead
question once the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5 years ago in Williams v.
Taylor, 529 U.S. 362 (2000).
But the justices declined to address the constitutional issue, which
leaves it technically open, said James Liebman of Columbia Law School and
an expert on AEDPA.
Noonan, a conservative Reagan appointee, joined Reinhardt, a liberal
Carter appointee, in raising the constitutional concerns. Noonan did say
the constitutional inquiry is preliminary. If the panel goes further, it
will seek additional briefing from the United States as well as the
parties, he said. Judge Ferdinand Fernandez, a conservative appointed by
President George H.W. Bush, refused to join his colleagues' inquiry.
Reinhardt and Noonan both expressed concern during the May 11 argument
that the statute violates constitutional separation of powers. Beyond
that, on the merits of the case, involving repeated denial of parole to a
model prisoner, Reinhardt suggested that the parole authorities have all
but eliminated the line between a life sentence with parole and life
without parole.
In response to Deputy Attorney General Pat Whalen's argument that the law
properly limits federal review of state habeas, Reinhardt said, sharply,
if a federal judge finds a constitutional rights violation "that is not
what matters, what matters is whether the state court was acting
unreasonably?"
Noonan focused on whether the statute creates a choice-of-law problem that
might limit even the Supreme Court's ability to revisit its own rulings.
The constitutional question arose in the case of Carl Merton Irons II, who
has spent 21 years in prison for the murder of a neighbor. Irons, who was
sentenced to 17 years-to-life, has been denied parole five times although
he is a model prisoner. Irons won federal court-ordered parole after
failing to convince state courts that California's parole board denied his
release based solely on the nature of his crime -- something he could
never change no matter how much he reformed. Irons v. Carey, No. 05-15275.
Outside the courtroom, Ann McClintock, a public defender representing
Irons on appeal, said of the panel's concern for AEDPA, "They are Article
III judges and this is Congress stepping on their constitutional
obligations."
OTHER CIRCUITS
Other circuits took up the issue shortly after the 1996 law was passed.
Two watershed decisions in the 1st and 3rd circuits gave judges wide
latitude to interpret state rulings, Martin v. Bissonette, 118 F.3d 871
(1st Cir. 1997), and Matteo v. Superintendent, 171 F.3d 877 (3d Cir.
1999). When the 7th Circuit stepped in with a broad holding on the reach
of the AEDPA, 2 judges dissented in the en banc ruling, Lindh v. Murphy,
96 F.3d 856 (7th Cir. 1996).
"Simply put, the [AEDPA], as amended, deprives a federal court of the
right to adjudicate the case," wrote Judge Kenneth Ripple in dissent.
(source : The National Law Journal)
CONNECTICUT:
For the Families, the Death of a Loved One's Killer Offers a Slim,
Bittersweet Consolation
In the hours after the serial killer Michael Bruce Ross was executed by
lethal injection early Friday, the families of several of the 8 young
women and girls he murdered said they found themselves at peace for the
1st time in more than 2 decades.
Joan Stavinsky of Columbia, Conn., whose stepdaughter Robin was raped and
murdered by Mr. Ross in 1983, said that she could not bring herself to
attend the execution, but that his death released her from the fear that
he might never pay for his crime.
"I was really worried the execution wasn't going to go off," she said,
recalling the scheduled January execution that was called off just hours
before it was to take place. "Going through it the last time, that was
really eating up my kids, particularly my daughter."
Edwin Shelley, who attended the execution, said he finally began to feel
at peace after the executioner injected the lethal dose of chemicals into
Mr. Ross, who fatally strangled Mr. Shelley's 14-year-old daughter Leslie
in 1984.
"I knew when I walked in there and saw him lying there, justice had
finally been served," Mr. Shelley said.
A book also closed for Lan Manh Tu, whose unwarranted sense that he failed
to protect his little sister, Dzung Ngoc Tu, whom Mr. Ross murdered in
1981 at Cornell University, was replaced by the belief that he had
validated her memory by watching Mr. Ross die.
At a visitor center at the prison complex where Mr. Ross was executed, the
fathers, mothers and sisters of some of his victims stepped to the
microphone after his execution and described how they felt as they watched
life drain from the man who had stolen the life of one of their own. Anger
was palpable in their voices. But there was no euphoria.
"We weren't celebrating anything," Jennifer Tabor said later. She was 12,
the same age her son is now, when Mr. Ross murdered her 19-year-old sister
Robin, a track and field champion. "This is something that needed to be
done."
But not everyone touched by Mr. Ross's violence was satisfied. Steve St.
John of Eastford, Conn., whose niece Tammy Williams was murdered in 1982
when she was 17, said in a telephone interview that he remained haunted by
visions of Tammy being victimized by Mr. Ross. This afternoon, he stated
firmly that the punishment did not fit the crime.
"The way he went to death was not the way his victims went to death," said
Mr. St. John, who did not attend the execution.
Barbara Emery-Willard of Maybrook, N.Y., whose best friend, Paula Perrera,
was 16 when she was murdered by Mr. Ross in Wallkill, N.Y., in 1982,
called Mr. Ross's execution "a guilt-free suicide."
Linda Brodeur of Jewett City, Conn., said the death of Mr. Ross, who
killed her sister, Debra Smith Taylor, in 1982, put an end to his voice,
which surfaced with regularity in news accounts. Her father died of
leukemia 2 years after Debra's murder, but her mother, Fabiola Smith, now
86, followed news of Mr. Ross on television.
"She wanted to keep up with the case, but it upset her terribly," Ms.
Brodeur said. "And we always felt that he loved the publicity."
Mr. Shelley said on Friday afternoon that while he planned to continue to
be active in support groups for families of homicide victims, the
execution gave him permission to move forward.
"There comes a time when you have to back away," said Mr. Shelley, who
with his wife, Lera, regularly attended legal proceedings involving Mr.
Ross during his 20-year journey to the death chamber.
Attempts to reach the families of April Brunais and Wendy Baribeault by
telephone were unsuccessful.
In the end, Mr. Ross's death appeared to free some family members to talk
about the burden of an attenuated but still consuming grief.
"There is a wearing down of the soul that over time you cannot replenish,"
Mr. Tu said. "Hopefully now we'll be able to move on; not forget, but move
on to something more positive, for their sake, too."
***********************
After a Mostly Silent Execution, Some Questions Remain
Michael Bruce Ross went to his death early Friday morning with his eyes
closed and his mouth shut.
Strapped to a table inside a state prison in Somers, in northern
Connecticut, Mr. Ross gasped and shuddered as the chemicals entered his
arm intravenously, according to 5 news media witnesses. At 2:25 a.m., he
became the 1st person executed in New England in 45 years.
Over the last year, the serial killer who murdered 8 teenage girls and
young women, raping most of them, had abandoned his appeals and fought to
be put to death. He dismissed those who would save him and said frequently
that he wanted to bring peace to the families of his victims.
In the end, however, when he was asked whether he wanted to make a final
statement before the 21 people who came to witness his death, he said, "No
thank you."
"It was just a cowardly exit on his behalf in that he couldn't even face
the families," said Edwin Shelley, whose daughter Leslie was 14 when Mr.
Ross strangled her in 1984. "There was no, 'I'm sorry,' no remorse shown
at all."
While his silence frustrated some, it also added to the mysteries that had
surrounded his motive: Had he truly acted out of sympathy for the victims?
Had he been driven to suicide by his years of solitary confinement? Or, as
psychiatrists suggested, had he gone stoically to death in a grand act of
vanity, a narcissist with a need to appear noble?
Or did it matter?
"To be honest, I didn't care what his motives were," Mr. Shelley said. "He
had made the comment that he wished to die. His wish is my wish,
regardless of how he dies."
Mr. Ross apparently never wavered on his final day.
"By the afternoon, he was - I don't want to say giddy - but by the time he
knew that no court was going to change anything, he became upbeat and
started joking around," said Martha R. H. Elliott, a writer who has
interviewed Mr. Ross extensively and spent more than 6 hours with him
before he died.
6 inmates remain on death row in Connecticut and several lawyers and death
penalty experts said that Mr. Ross's execution was not likely to speed
their path to execution. The death penalty has little support in the
Northeast, where only Pennsylvania and now Connecticut have carried out
executions in the last 40 years. The 4 inmates executed in the 2 states
since the 1960's all abandoned appeals.
Given the rarity of capital punishment in the region, the distinctive case
of Mr. Ross led Connecticut and its courts on a strange psychological
journey that concluded on an uncommonly cold morning in May, Friday the
13th.
The case, drawn out over two decades, was replayed - and amplified - in a
few frantic months this year. Against the wishes of Mr. Ross, other
people, including his sister and father, tried to stop the execution. Some
claimed that Mr. Ross was incompetent, that his decisions were driven by
mental illness.
They seemed to have succeeded in January, after intervention by a federal
judge halted Mr. Ross's initial execution date that month. But a new
execution date, in May, was scheduled almost immediately, and a new round
of legal challenges began.
Judges reviewed testimony that "sexual sadism" controlled Mr. Ross's
crimes and that "malignant narcissism" controlled his desire to die. In
court, Mr. Ross sneered at his doubters and sobbed in despair. On
television, he smiled.
Death penalty opponents accused the state, in one of the nation's most
liberal regions, of reverting to barbarism. And families of the victims
wondered if the execution would ever go forward - or if Mr. Ross would
change his mind.
And then he was dead.
"The odd thing about the whole thing," said Kenton Robinson, a reporter
for The Day of New London who witnessed the execution, "was just the
silence." The state's 1st execution by lethal injection was carried out at
Osborn Correctional Institution, hidden behind a grassy slope in Somers,
about a mile from a development of new luxury homes and the Massachusetts
border.
About 1 a.m., John Stamm was among 300 protesters walking quietly along a
two-lane rural road in the dark toward the prison entrance.
Mr. Stamm, 86, said his views against capital punishment were rooted in
his childhood in Germany, where he "saw the Nazis kill people."
Asked whether Mr. Ross's was a life worth saving, he said, "I think
everyone is capable of redemption; it doesn't mean they'll all make it."
Mr. Ross spent his final day in a holding cell, reading the Bible and
praying with several spiritual advisers. His last meal was turkey a la
king. He received last rites from a prison chaplain shortly before he was
escorted to the execution chamber about 1:30 a.m.
"He was at peace and he was ready," said Kathy Jaeger, who described
herself as a spiritual advocate and who met with him about 10 p.m. "He was
in as good a place as he could be."
Nine relatives of Mr. Ross's victims witnessed the execution. They stood
in the middle of a witness room with a victims' advocate, and the two
detectives who had arrested Mr. Ross. On either side of them, separated by
heavy gray curtains, were 4 people there at Mr. Ross's request and 5 news
media witnesses with notepads and pens.
At 2:08 a.m., another curtain that had blocked the execution chamber
opened and revealed Mr. Ross strapped to a padded table, his arms
outstretched.
A microphone was mounted near the table but Mr. Ross chose not to make a
statement. Ms. Jaeger said Mr. Ross considered making an apology but "just
didn't know if he was going to be able to deliver it, from wherever he was
spiritually, emotionally."
"When he said, 'No thank you,' I was disappointed," she said. "But I
understood. I mean, my God, this guy's about to die, and knowingly."
A warden placed a call from the chamber to receive the execution order.
"Is there any legal impediment preventing me from issuing this order?"
Theresa C. Lantz, commissioner of the Department of Correction, asked the
chief state's attorney, Christopher L. Morano.
Over a web of open phone lines, lawyers and court clerks made a final
round of checks to see whether any stays of execution had been ordered.
None had been.
The injection began at 2:13 a.m.
"He definitely gasped and shuddered," said Shelly Sindland, a reporter for
WTIC-TV.
Ms. Jaeger, who witnessed the execution at Mr. Ross's request, said, "It
almost looked involuntary. It was like he winced."
Some heard a family member say, sarcastically, "Uh, feeling some pain?"
And then, after the color appeared to fade from Mr. Ross's face, another
family member said, "It was too peaceful."
The execution had been scheduled for 2:01 a.m., "or as soon thereafter as
possible," according to a Correction Department directive. As the clock
neared 2:30 a.m., Christine Whidden, the warden of Robinson Correctional
Institution, addressed reporters gathered at the facility just down the
road from Osborn.
"Death occurred at 2:25 a.m. on this day," she said.
Debbie Dupuis, the sister of Robin Stavinsky, who Mr. Ross murdered in
1983 when she was 19, told reporters, "I thought I would feel closure, but
I felt anger just watching him lay there and just sleep after what he did
to these women."
Brian Garnett, a Correction Department spokesman, said later that the
execution occurred slightly later than scheduled because "we were ensuring
that everything was done appropriately."
"There were no issues with the procedure last night," he said. "It went
totally according to plan."
*********************
Connecticut Execution Is Unlikely to Hasten Others, Experts Say
The execution of Michael Bruce Ross is an aberration that is unlikely to
lead to more executions in New England or the rest of the Northeast,
several death penalty experts said.
Before Mr. Ross, 45, died by lethal injection early Friday after forgoing
appeals, no inmate had been executed in New England since 1960.
Several experts, including death penalty opponents, said in interviews
this week that his case was too distinctive and extreme to accelerate
other death penalty cases or increase the acceptance of capital punishment
in one of the nation's more liberal regions.
"It strikes me that the 1st person executed in New England in however many
decades is a white serial killer who wanted to die," said Michael A.
Mello, a former capital defense lawyer and now a professor at Vermont Law
School. "In a sense it's a perfect storm."
Although Mr. Ross's mental competency came into question because of his
decision to abandon his appeals, Professor Mello said his case lacked
other elements often used to fight execution, such as questions of
innocence or racial bias.
Mr. Ross, a 1981 graduate of Cornell University and a former life
insurance salesman, was arrested on murder charges in 1984. He eventually
confessed to strangling 8 girls and young women and raping most of them in
the early 1980's.
Last year, after the State Supreme Court affirmed his death sentence, he
decided to forgo further appeals.
"He'll become the benchmark, the yardstick against which to measure other
cases, and very, very few other cases will match up," Professor Mello
said.
The number of death row inmates is declining across the Northeast, though
not because inmates are being executed.
Connecticut and New Hampshire are the two states in New England that have
the death penalty, and only Connecticut has inmates waiting on death row.
6 inmates remain there. New Hampshire's last execution was in 1939.
Elsewhere in the Northeast, Pennsylvania is the only state that has
executed anyone since a 1976 United States Supreme Court ruling that
allowed executions to resume. The three inmates executed in Pennsylvania
since then had also decided to forgo appeals.
Pennsylvania has 220 death row inmates, down from more than 250 several
years ago, according to Susan E. McNaughton, press secretary for the
Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. The decline has resulted from some
inmates winning new sentences, some being exonerated and some dying
naturally, she said.
"The governor is definitely signing death warrants for individuals," said
Ms. McNaughton, noting that Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a Democrat, had signed
35 death warrants since 2003. "It's just that at one stage or another in
the court process they are getting stayed."
No one has been executed in Pennsylvania since 1999 and no executions are
pending, she said. None have been scheduled elsewhere in the Northeast.
Last June, New York's highest court found unconstitutional a central
provision of the state's death penalty law. Last month, Democrats in the
State Assembly blocked efforts to rewrite the law. The state has two
inmates on death row.
In New Jersey, a state appeals court ruled in February that the state had
to change the rules for how it carries out executions. Last year, the
state had 13 people on death row. Now it has 11, after the sentences of 2
inmates were reduced to life, a Department of Corrections spokesman said.
The last time an inmate was executed in New York was in 1963, when 2 men
were electrocuted. The same year, New Jersey conducted its last execution,
also by electrocution.
Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information
Center in Washington, which compiles statistics about the death penalty
and argues that it is unjustly applied, said the only inmates executed in
the Northeast have been so-called "volunteers."
"I think in the end if someone wants to be executed, the precedent in
state and federal court is that these generally go forward, barring total
incompetency, which is a very high bar to reach," he said.
Another Connecticut death row inmate, Sedrick Cobb, recently wrote to a
Superior Court judge saying that he wanted to forgo his appeals, a
development first reported by The Hartford Courant. But a lawyer who has
represented Mr. Cobb, David S. Golub, said that he continued to represent
him and that the letter did not reflect Mr. Cobb's true legal strategy.
Mr. Cobb, who is black, was sentenced to death in 1991 for kidnapping,
raping and killing a 23-year-old white woman in Waterbury in 1989. Mr.
Cobb, now 43, has said before that he wants to forgo appeals, then changed
his mind.
"Sedrick Cobb is not a volunteer," Mr. Golub said. "Sedrick Cobb is
fighting his death sentence. I'm not commenting on the letter. Sedrick
Cobb's death sentence is going to be overturned."
Mr. Golub noted a recent poll by Quinnipiac University that showed 59 % of
voters in Connecticut support the death penalty but prefer life in prison
without parole over capital punishment by 49 to 37 %. In the case of Mr.
Ross, however, 70 % of voters in the same poll supported the death
penalty.
"Support for the death penalty may be down but support for executing Ross
is way up," Mr. Golub said. "He's very unlikable."
Mr. Golub is among many death penalty opponents who believe Mr. Ross's
execution inside the prison in Somers could prompt a fresh debate in
Connecticut, in part because Mr. Ross will no longer be the focus.
But Gov. M. Jodi Rell, a Republican, has said she will veto any bill that
repeals the death penalty.
Lawmakers in both parties say a debate will not occur during the current
legislative session, which ends in June.
(source for all: New York Times)
*********************
In Griswold, Residents Relieved Ross Saga Ended With Execution
Interviewed in the wake of serial killer Michael Ross' execution, business
owners and their customers along Main Street expressed 2 common themes
Friday afternoon. They were glad it was over - and come back when
something good happens in town.
At Dean's Corner deli, several people spoke up at once.
"I'm just glad it's over. Glad it's done," said Kate Breen, who lives in
Lisbon and grew up in Griswold near the spot where 14-year-old victims
April Brunais and Leslie Shelley were found dead in 1984.
It was a shocking time in town, she said.
"Should have been done 10 years ago," a man said, grabbing his grinder and
waving to friends.
Outside Altone's Bar, which had hosted a party Thursday night to celebrate
Ross' demise, two signs remained, flanking the door. They read: "Ross Burn
in Hell!" and "Honk if Ross Should Die!"
Ross lived in Griswold when he committed the murders that led to the death
sentence that finally was carried out early Friday morning. 3 of his 8
female victims were Griswold residents.
For the past 21 years, since Ross' arrest in 1984, news of the gruesome
murders and later his trial, conviction, death sentence and seemingly
endless appeals, brought unwanted notoriety to this working-class mill
town. Every time Ross made the news, Griswold and Jewett City were put in
the spotlight. When the faces of his young victims appeared in the media,
their families and friends were jolted anew.
"Michael Ross' face has been all over the TV for the past 20 years," said
Todd Atlas, who has worked at Joe D's Pizza for the past 11 years. "He
deserved to die. Why keep him alive? I feel better now for the families of
the people he killed."
Erica Coutu, who was a little girl in Griswold at the time of the murders,
remembered how her mother told her she was no longer allowed to ride her
bicycle on the streets of her neighborhood. At the time, no one knew the
killer lived nearby.
Coutu and her grandmother, Marian Staples, dined at Joe D's Friday
afternoon to celebrate Coutu's birthday, which is today.
"It's about time," Coutu said. "I say that out of pure frustration that we
had to pay for him all those years, all those legal appeals. Sometimes,
the system works for people who aren't as guilty as they seemed, but not
him. I was watching the news last night wondering if he would get another
stay."
Charlene Gardner, a member of the kitchen staff at Charlene's Diner, said
she hopes the families of Ross' victims will be at peace now. Gardner was
frustrated that the entire spectacle that surrounded Ross over the years
turned him into a celebrity.
"They (the families) will be at peace if everyone leaves them alone now,"
Gardner said. "Now he's in the record books - 1st person executed in New
England in so many (45) years."
Diner owner Charlene Schultz said she felt a chill this morning when she
shouted to her husband, asking if the execution had really happened.
"You've got to feel for his father," she said of Dan Ross, who lost
last-minute appeals to stop the execution. "You really feel for the
families who for 20 years had to see his face on the TV."
(source: The Day)
********************
Victims' families get sense of closure from execution
The relatives of Michael Ross' victims felt justice was finally done
Friday morning when the serial killer was executed.
Yet, the death of the man who caused their families so much pain did not
do much to ease their grief.
After Ross was pronounced dead at Osborn Correctional Institution at 2:25
a.m., the victims' family members, many of whom witnessed the execution,
spoke to the media at a press conference at a nearby prison.
"None of you know what we went through tonight," said Debbie Dupris,
sister of murder victim Robin Stavinsky. "I thought I would feel closure,
but I felt anger just watching him lay there and sleep after what he did
to these women."
"I know she will rest easier knowing that he lost his life," Dupris said.
A composed Edwin Shelley, the father of Leslie Shelley, 14, of Griswold,
who was killed April 22, 1984, said he, his wife, Lera, and other family
members, waited "21 years for justice."
Lera Shelley, who was a bit more emotional than her husband, said she was
glad for closure. "Now they can all rest in peace, finally."
The Shelleys were among 9 relatives of the victims who watched the
execution.
Jennifer Tabor, stepsister of Robin Stavinsky, said "the sadness of losing
Robin will always remain."
"Now the anger caused by Michael Ross' crimes will begin to fade," she
said.
Media witnesses who watched the execution said they heard family members
commenting before and during the execution.
One was overheard complaining, "He didn't even look over here," when Ross
did not make a final statement.
Another heard a family member say Ross' death was "too peaceful."
Also at the press conference Friday morning was Lan Tu, whose sister,
Dzung Ngoc Tu, was Ross' 1st victim. He traveled from Maryland to
Connecticut to be at the execution.
Dzung Ngoc Tu was killed in New York state. Ross was not sentenced to die
for killing her, so Tu was not allowed to be in the viewing room. But the
state Department of Corrections allowed him to wait in a room close to the
death chamber, which he said was helpful.
"We will always miss my sister and I feel that this was only a small
measure of justice for the pain Michael Ross caused our family and the
loss. It is an ending," said Tu, whose family, including members living in
their native Vietnam, asked him to attend the execution.
Tu said he believed Ross' death would make him feel a little better.
"Probably because I will not have to hear about Michael Ross again and
knowing he is not around and not hearing about all the people fussing
about him," Tu said.
(source: Danbury News-Times)
******************
For Ross, No Theatrics At The End----Serial Killer Slipped Quietly Away
Before Eyes Of 21 Witnesses
Editor's note: Day Staff Writer Kenton Robinson was among those who
witnessed the execution by lethal injection of serial killer Michael Ross
on Friday. His report of Ross' final moments follows.
The curtains of the death chamber open at 2:08 on the morning of Friday
the 13th.
Through the glass, 21 witnesses behold the killer Michael Ross.
What are they to make of this?
He is fixed, arms splayed, to a cruciform table. A white sheet draped over
his legs and his torso spills to the floor, so that his body seems to
hover in the air.
Even under the sheet that hides them, the toes of his feet can be seen to
point neatly downward. Each of his arms is strapped with four bands of
black Velcro. Each bears a needle and clear plastic catheter rooted deep
in a vein. His hands' articulate fingers are Ace-bandaged together.
Ross, his black hair pulled back in a bun, lies face up, eyes shut, his
bug-eye glasses balanced on the narrow bridge of his nose.
During the entire ritual that correction officials call "the process," he
will not open his eyes. Not even once.
David Strange, the warden of the Osborn Correctional Institution, formal
and stiff in what could be an undertaker's suit, leans over Ross with a
microphone and asks, "Inmate Ross, do you wish to make a final statement?"
"No, thank you," mumbles Ross.
Strange stands up and pivots away to pick up a cherry-red telephone hung
from the turquoise cinderblock wall. He calls Correction Commissioner
Theresa Lantz to make sure there are no last-minute hurdles to this
execution.
Ross lies still.
"He didn't even have the balls to say anything," a witness mutters.
There are 3 distinct groups of witnesses here this early morning, squeezed
together in a narrow room facing into the picture window of the death
chamber: 5 are members of the press with Brian Garnett, the communications
director for the state Department of Correction; 11 are family members of
Ross' victims and the 2 detectives who captured him; and 4 are Ross'
invited guests, his friends and spiritual advisers.
The three groups are pressed so closely together they can feel one another
breathe, and yet they are separated by two thin, purple curtains drawn to
protect their privacy. And so it is that the press cannot attribute
comments to specific witnesses in the two groups they cannot see.
All three groups have come to this observation room by the same circuitous
route: a series of antechambers, waiting rooms, steel doors, gates and
walkways lined with razor wire and beds of tulips. They have walked long,
cavernous halls in dim light punctuated by row upon row of clocks set to
no time in this world.
The execution itself is the culmination of more than 20 years of
litigation. It is the 1st execution in Connecticut and New England in 45
years. Each step is the 1st step of a new ritual, each motion prescribed
by correction department protocol. When it is over, the chief state's
attorney and the state's attorney general will stand on a podium in the
visiting room of the nearby Carl Robinson Correctional Institution and
announce that justice has been done.
The media witnesses will dutifully report what they saw, and family
members of the 8 girls and young women who died at the hands of Michael
Bruce Ross will dutifully thank the state for finally disposing of the man
who killed their loved ones.
But first, there is the ritual.
2:10: Ross lifts his head as if to straighten a kink in his neck. Then he
lies back, seeming almost relaxed but for the juddering pulse of the
carotid artery in his neck.
2:12: As the warden still talks on the phone, that pulse seems to subtly
accelerate. It is not the pulse of a heart at rest. It is that of a racing
heart.
2:13: The warden hangs up, turns and marches to the far wall, where he
takes up his position: parade rest, except that he crosses his hands in
front of him.
This is the prearranged signal for the executioner, hidden behind a 2-way
mirror, to begin feeding the first of three chemicals into Ross' veins.
A sudden shudder wracks Ross' neck and chest; his mouth blows out 2 puffs
of air that balloon his cheeks. The artery in his throat still beats.
"Oh," one of the family witnesses mocks. "He's feeling some pain."
2:14: Ross falls still, the pulse no longer visible.
2:15: There is no sign of breathing, no visible pulse. Witnesses stare in
vain at the plastic catheters to try to spot the chemicals flowing into
them. Their eyes search the body for movement of any kind.
2:16: No movement.
2:18: Ross' body seems to have grown rigid before the witnesses' eyes, the
skin of his face turning gray as putty.
"It's too peaceful," complains a family member.
2:20: The flesh of his arms has grown mottled, red and white. Witnesses
softly cough.
2:21: The curtain is closed. The witnesses wait. There are no tears, no
cries, no sounds of grief or relief.
2:25: Strange announces that "inmate Michael Ross has been pronounced dead
at 2:25 a.m."
24 years and a day after he raped and murdered his 1st victim, Michael
Bruce Ross, 45, is dead.
He never once opened his eyes.
"He didn't even look over here," a family member mutters.
(source: The Day)
*******************
The death penalty
It was good to see the Connecticut strangler, Michael Ross, finally meet
the grim reaper ("Murderer executed in Conn." May 13).
But it was not justice that his victims' families had to wait through 20
years of appeals.
There is no legitimate reason why the appeals process in death-penalty
cases can't be dramatically reduced.
Under our legal system, the rights of victims and their families are still
not respected.
Their legal rights under criminal law really end once the criminal is
arrested, and they often have to depend on unlikely remedies under civil
law for any modicum of justice.
Within constitutional limits, we should try to make sure that convicts on
death row are executed while the family members of the victims are still
alive.
If we can't accomplish this, we should eliminate capital punishment, and
stop teasing and torturing victims' families with legal gamesmanship.
Michael Gorman, Whitestone
(source: Letter to the Editor, New York Post)
***********************
Death divides sharply at Ross' execution -- People who support and abhor
capital punishment stand outside the Osborn Correctional Institution until
the serial killer is put to death.
At 1:50 a.m., hundreds of people standing vigil outside the Osborn
Correctional Institution go from prayers and whispers to silence.
They bow their heads and stand beneath pinpoint stars, waiting for word of
New England's 1st execution in 45 years.
A nun in a white habit and white sneakers clutches her rosary beads.
Dozens of people clutch banners that vainly oppose, at least on this
night, the state's machinery of death.
At 2:30 a.m., cell phones jangle, and word spreads.
Michael Bruce Ross, a serial killer who had begged the courts for his
right to die, has finally gotten his wish.
He kept his eyes closed, witnesses say.
He gasped, shuddered, and was gone.
So ends the life of a farm boy and Ivy League graduate who took the lives
of eight young women and girls, then spent nearly 20 years on death row.
In a wee-hours news conference yesterday, the victims' family members
stood at a podium and thanked the State of Connecticut for delivering
justice.
In the hours preceding the execution, the vigil began with prayer at
Somers Congregational Church at 9 p.m.
Some people at the prayer vigil had been walking day-by-day since Sunday
in a 30-mile "Dissent with Dignity" protest organized by the Connecticut
Network to Abolish the Death Penalty and Amnesty International.
Gail Canzano walked 10 miles of the march. Her brother was stabbed to
death six years ago, but she said she had been a death-penalty opponent
long before that.
"Executions are an example of gratuitous violence. They do not help the
family. They do not help the healing process."
At 11:30 p.m., the opponents gathered in Parking Lot A at the foot of a
mile-long hill leading to the gates of the Osborn facility.
John and Eric Stamm, father and son, 86 and 52, respectively, are
practicing Quakers and veterans of many a march.
John left Germany when he was 13. As a Jew, "I was harassed and arrested
by the Nazis. My best friend was sent to a concentration camp and killed.
. . . I'm against legalized killing since I was a little boy."
His activism includes a 1946 sit-in to integrate the Bullock's department
store lunch counter in Los Angeles, nearly two decades before the
civil-rights movement swept the country.
He took heart in this gathering.
"I've been doing this for peace for a long time, and I'm always in the
minority. This feels good," he said. "It's a large crowd."
In Parking Lot B, 4 people waited in the dark before the uphill march
began.
They included Rich, a painting and wallpaper contractor from Springfield
who sat in his pickup with the engine idling. Behind him was a
double-sided sign saying "Liberalism is a Mental Disorder."
"My point is, I think the left-wing radicals are narrow-minded people," he
said. "To keep a mass murderer alive is kinda nutty, because [liberals]
work so hard for so many nutty ideas.
"They'll lash themselves to a tree and stay there for six months. They're
just nutty. They're more concerned about spotted owls or seals than they
are about people. It kind of drives me crazy. That's why I'm here."
Meanwhile, at the media center nearby, Connecticut Attorney General
Richard Blumenthal and Chief State's Attorney Christopher L. Morano and
Kevin T. Kane, state's attorney for the New London Judicial District, said
it was time to administer the law. In a joint statement, they said: "This
death sentence resulted from a unaimous verdict of a jury of 12 that was
exhaustively scrutinized and affirmed by the Supreme Court of the State of
Connecticut and the Supreme Court of the United States."
At 1 a.m., the head of the line reached the top of the hill.
There were now at least 300 people standing along the roadside.
Tricia Shanley, a retired mental-health administrator from Providence and
death-penalty activist, stood near the blue barricades.
"This is such a horrible moment in New England. It's hideous. After all
the years we've been without the death penalty Connecticut has succumbed
to such a tragic moment," Shanley said.
Night turned into early morning, Friday the 13th.
At 2:08 a.m., a curtain opened and 5 media witnesses peered into the
Osborn Correctional Institution execution chamber.
Ross was strapped to a gurney, and IV lines were already threaded into
each arm. His fingers were taped at the ends. His head was tilted upward,
as if he was looking at the sky, but behind his aviator-style glasses, his
eyes were closed.
A warden asked, "Inmate Ross, do you wish to make a final statement?"
"No thank you," Ross responded.
At 2:12 a.m., an executioner injected a lethal dose of thiopental sodium
into Ross's veins.
"There was a gasp. There was a shudder, but that was it," says Gerry
Brooks of WVIT-TV NBC 30.
By 2:14, the witnesses say, Michael Ross had left this world.
(source: The Providence Journal)
