Ross's execution postponed

HARTFORD, Conn. (May 2) - The Connecticut Supreme Court on Monday postponed the lethal injection of a serial killer who wants to expedite his death, again delaying what would be New England's first scheduled execution in 45 years.

The two-day postponement, until May 13, gives attorneys the full 20 days required by law to appeal a judge's April ruling that found Michael Ross competent to accept his sentence. The postponement also will allow the court more time to decide if an attorney appointed to argue that Ross was incompetent may continue to seek to block the execution.

Ross, 45, has admitted killing and raping eight young women in Connecticut and New York in the early 1980s. He was ruled competent to forgo his appeals, but his attorney is appealing that ruling.

Ross fought off attempts by public defenders, death penalty opponents and his own family to stop his execution last year and came within hours of death in January. The competency hearing came after a federal judge chastised another attorney for helping Ross hasten his execution.

Ross' witnesses include friends, spiritual advisers
By SUSAN HAIGH
Associated Press Writer

May 11, 2005, 10:18 PM EDT

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Convicted serial killer Michael Ross will have up
to three friendly faces in the death chamber if his execution is
carried out early Friday morning.

The list tentatively includes his pastoral advocate, a priest and a
journalist, according to those familiar with Ross' plans.

A second priest, Monsignor John Gilmartin of Stratford, is slated to
act as the condemned killer's official spiritual adviser, providing
religious counsel to Ross during the final hours of his life. It is
unclear whether Gilmartin will also witness the execution.

Kathy Jaeger, who graduated with Ross from Cornell University in 1981,
has been his pastoral adviser for the past eight years. She was one of
Ross' witnesses in January, when he came within hours of death before
legal maneuvering forced a delay.

Jaeger, who has also spelled her last name Yeager, said she is
preparing herself emotionally for the execution to go forward. She
plans to spend the day in solitude before traveling to the Osborn
Correctional Institution in Somers to meet with Ross and witness the 2
a.m. execution.

"I'm going to take the day as it comes," Jaeger said.

"There isn't a lot of expectation that any of this legal exercise is
going to have any impact," she said, referring to the flurry of
last-minute appeals filed by Ross' estranged sister and an attorney who
has represented Ross' father.

Ross, 45, was sentenced to death for murdering four young women in
eastern Connecticut in the early 1980s and has confessed to four other
murders in Connecticut and New York. Ross has said he wants to forgo
his remaining appeals and face death by lethal injection. He would be
the first person executed in New England in 45 years.

Ross' other two witnesses include the Rev. John Giuliani of the
Benedictine Grange in Redding and Martha Elliot, a journalist who has
written about Ross' case over the years.

Giuliani said he has known Ross for nearly eight years and watched him
become a devoted Catholic who prays daily.

"This man has become a new being," Giuliani said.

The priest said he personally opposes the death penalty, but
understands Ross' wishes to face his execution. He said he has never
attempted to dissuade Ross from forgoing his remaining appeals.

On Thursday night and into Friday morning, Giuliani will join Gilmartin
and pray with Ross until shortly before the execution.

While he has helped people deal with death in the past, Giuliani
acknowledges that Ross' execution will be personally challenging.

"I'm sure it's going to be difficult. I have no doubt. Seeing a life
being extinguished with such technological sophistication, it's a whole
new barbarism," he said.

Ross' attorney, T.R. Paulding, said he will not witness the execution.
However, he plans to visit with Ross in the evening.

"I will be there and I will do what corrections wants me to do,"
Paulding said, referring to the Department of Correction.

Ross' girlfriend, Susan Powers, and his father, Dan Ross, also plan to
visit with him before the execution. However, as of Wednesday, neither
were slated to witness the event, according to those familiar with the
killer's plans.

Besides Ross' witnesses, members of the media and several relatives of
the victims plan to watch the execution.

"It's going to be a finality. It's going to be over," said Edwin
Shelley of Griswold, father of 14-year-old Leslie Shelley, Ross'
seventh victim.

Besides Ross' witnesses, members of the media and several relatives of
the victims plan to watch the execution.

"It's going to be a finality. It's going to be over," said Edwin
Shelley of Griswold, father of 14-year-old Leslie Shelley, Ross'
seventh victim.

Cheshire murders renew death penalty fight

KEN DIXON, Connecticut Post

For a long time I believed in the death penalty. It made simple arithmetical
sense. Kill someone: be killed.

Then Michael Ross, Connecticut's serial rapist and murderer of at least
eight women dating back to 1981, came along.

He ultimately got what he said he wanted, which was to die, in May 2005, the
first Connecticut inmate executed in nearly 45 years. That was around the
time it dawned on me that as tempting as the state-sanctioned killing of a
murderer may be - laundering our rage through a faceless executioner -
taxpayers shouldn't be in the business of giving them what they want.

It's not as if a lethal injection could in anyway duplicate a murder
victim's terror.

Public discussion of the issue was revived last week when horrendous
violence ripped away the quiet facade of a suburban Cheshire home in
Connecticut's own version of "In Cold Blood," Truman Capote's landmark book
about a Midwestern family that was murdered by a duo of drifters.

I hope Steven Hayes, 44, of Winsted and Joshua Komisarjevsky, 26, of
Cheshire, don't become latter-day literary figures. I also hope that, if
found guilty, they spend long, anguished lives in tiny cages where they can
be forgotten until they expire 30, 40, 50 years down the line and taken out
of prison in coffins.

Life locked up in prison would mean that we won't have to reprise drawn-out
court proceedings every few years.

Maybe most important, Dr. William Petit Jr., the only survivor of the home
invasion, rapes and murders of his family, would be spared the many standard
appeals on capital cases that would keep the case in the news for the next
20 years.

It would protect Dr. Petit, 50, from decades of reiterated testimony on his
assault and the unspeakable sexual assaults to his wife, Jennifer
Hawke-Petit, 48, and 11-year-old Michaela Petit, who died of smoke
inhalation along with 17-year-old Hayley Petit when the assailants set the
home on fire.

After a point, capital-felony cases become get-out-of-prison day trips for
the murderers. They're also recurring public trials for the victims'
families, who have to relive the crime every time they walk into a
courtroom, every time a vacuous TV reporter asks them "What does it feel
like?"

Gov. M. Jodi Rell said Friday that she is a long-time supporter of the death
penalty for the most-violent crimes and supported the decision of Michael
Dearington, state's attorney for the Judicial District of New Haven, to seek
the death penalty. "This certainly falls into that category, in my mind" she
told reporters. "But at the same time I understand people are innocent until
proven guilty."

Another problem with Connecticut's death penalty has a name and a face. It's
James Tillman, the East Hartford man who spent 18 years in prison on a rape
charge. He was exonerated with DNA evidence and the General Assembly awarded
him $5 million this past session.

Imagine if the victim had died in the attack and Tillman was eventually
executed, an innocent man. That's the finality of the death penalty.

State Rep. T.R. Rowe, R-Trumbull is one of those lawmakers who feels
passionately about the death penalty.

"It just hits people close to home," Rowe said of last week's tragedy. "It's
Cheshire. It's a nice house. It's the soft underbelly of suburbia."

Rowe, who favors the death penalty and opposes abortion, agrees that capital
punishment is unworkable and should be either overhauled or eliminated.

One way to change it would be to allow a defendant's criminal past to be
used by juries as a so-called aggravating factor to mount a death sentence.
Both Hayes and Komisarjevsky, who were arrested leaving the scene by
Cheshire police, are ex-cons with strings of burglaries and both face six
capital-felony counts.

Rep. Mike Lawlor, D-East Haven, one of the Capitol's most-vehement opponents
to capital punishment, said Hayes and Komisarjevsky, if guilty, both deserve
a date with a lethal injection.

The problem is, capital cases can linger for decades. Indeed, if the
assailants don't want to die, it could take 40 years of appeals, paid for by
the taxpayers, to finally get them onto the gurneys at the Carl Robinson
Correctional Institution.

"It's just a horrible process that's about to begin," Lawlor said. "It's
better to lock them up forever, with no possibility for release. That's the
sentence that Michael Ross feared the most."

Why should Ross, or any capital felon, get the same treatment that a pet
owner would give a dear-old dog or beloved, elderly cat?

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Source : Connecticut Post

http://www.connpost.com/localnews/ci_6487430