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DEATH PENALTY
Ross goes quietly
BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN

At 2:01 a.m. on Friday the 13th, the state of Connecticut put Michael Ross to death by lethal injection. Given the rarity of the event, the first state execution in New England since 1960, one might have anticipated that people on both sides of the death-penalty issue would show to mark the occasion. Clearly the Connecticut Department of Correction (DOC) expected it, setting aside separate parking lots for pro- and anti-execution protesters. Clearly the media anticipated it, swarming the DOC campus on the Enfield/Somers border in search of protesters. ("I think they’re arriving around 12," I told one young, black-suited blond newscaster. "That doesn’t do me any good for my 11-o’clock stand-up," she grumbled.)

Three busloads of anti-death-penalty protesters finally arrived at 12:20, after meeting up at a Congregational church, and about 225 people (as best I could separate the protesters from the press and photographers, some 40 of whom tagged along) took their pre-planned walk to "within 50 feet of the driveway of the Osborn Correctional Institution" — which, although it sounds close, actually left them a very long way from the building itself.

Of the 225, roughly 50 came from Massachusetts, according to Rebecca Keiser of Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty. Quite a few Rhode Island and New Hampshire residents attended as well, and a few flew in for the event.

Which means that in all of Connecticut, significantly fewer than 175 people felt strongly enough to come out to protest their own state’s first execution in decades. That may partly reflect the particulars of the case. Michael Ross admitted killing eight women, raping at least some of them beforehand, and he had declared that he wanted to be put to death.

But that makes the other half of the equation even more curious: the virtual absence of a pro-execution crowd. A total of five came out for the event, four of whom carried no signs and had little apparent interest. The only enthusiast for Ross’s death was a man who came early, equipped with a five-foot-high sign on wheels declaring that LIBERALISM IS A MENTAL DISORDER. He sat in his truck (festooned with anti-liberal stickers) all evening, agreeably getting out to be interviewed in front of the sign for 11-o’clock stand-ups, and later marching, sign in tow, alongside the anti-death-penalty protesters toward the Osborn building. After standing around awhile, he turned and wheeled his sign back to his truck, well before the execution.

Sure, it was in the middle of nowhere and during the wee hours of the morning. Still, think of the population living within a two hours’ drive, including residents of Boston, Springfield, Worcester, Providence, Hartford, New Haven, and Albany. Given that, it seemed stunning that "the Catholic contingent," as one person called it, turned out to number all of five. They stopped at a seemingly random spot that was, they had determined, the closest they could get to the "Execution Enclosure," as the Connecticut DOC Web site calls it. The contingent remained there, saying the rosary, until Ross died.

Connecticut, it seems, is pretty blasé about the execution. A few hours before the event, at the nearby T.J.I. Friday’s bar on Route 220, the only person with a strong opinion was Mary Preussel — "absolutely against the death penalty" — a Dallas resident in town for a business trip. Locals ranged from ambivalent to indifferent. Ross’s execution had not been a big topic of conversation over the pervious couple of days, said the bartender, Jess. As patron Mike Halpy philosophized, "I guess however you look at it, [Ross] is an asshole."


Issue Date: May 20 - 26, 2005
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