Word: rosse
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...someone who killed with such ease, Michael Ross is finding it very hard to die. The bespectacled insurance salesman from Connecticut who murdered eight young women a generation ago has languished on death row since 1987. For much of that time, he has been begging the state to execute him. But in a region that hasn't put anyone to death in almost 45 years, Ross can't seem to prevail...
...Before Ross found his voice as a volunteer, he was a silent killer. He primarily stalked the back roads of a wedge of Connecticut called the Quiet Corner, hustling his victims into the woods before he raped and strangled them. But when he settled into death row two decades ago, the Cornell graduate became a prolific writer. He published articles embracing his fate, including pious meditations like "It's Time for Me to Die" and "My Journey Towards the Light," everywhere from the National Catholic Reporter to Might magazine. Ross's private letters reveal a far more agitated soul--alternately...
Those attitudes, according to forensic psychiatrist Eric Goldsmith, are "the usual combination" for volunteers. Murderers can be astonishingly sensitive to criticism, and offering to die can be seen as an effective shield from the accusations of society or the pangs of conscience. Ross's public defenders have told him that he could have an additional 5 to 10 years of appeals left and that his mental instability might win him commutation to life without parole. But for Ross, who wept at how few responses his more than 200 goodbye letters to pen pals and supporters elicited, the prospect...
After years of unsuccessful schemes to end his appeals, Ross finally fired his public defenders and, in 2004, hired T.R. Paulding Jr., a lawyer with little capital-case experience who promised to help Ross die. Together, they nearly succeeded. On Oct. 6, with no defense attorneys opposing Ross's execution, the New London Superior Court quickly affirmed his right to die: lethal injection was set for Jan. 26. But his former public defenders--along with lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union, the Missionary Society of Connecticut and Ross's father--argued all the way to the Supreme Court that...
...Walking, called the devout Catholic attorney on the phone. Prejean says the conversation was blunt: "'T.R.,' I told him, 'you are the one movable part of this machinery of death.'" Eventually, a judge made an extraordinary threat to take away Paulding's law license if any new evidence about Ross's competence emerged after he had been executed. An hour from death, Ross backed down--in order to save his lawyer's neck, he says. The aborted execution cost the state of Connecticut $289,000 in wasted preparations and brought fresh anguish to the victims' families. The execution has been...