Connecticut Executes Serial Killer Michael Ross, New England's First Execution in 45 Years
Ross gave up his appeals, saying his victims' families had suffered enough. His father, his sister and public defenders tried to stop it until the final hours.
Published
Michael Ross gave up his appeals and pushed for his own execution. Early on May 13, 2005, Connecticut put him to death, the first execution in New England in 45 years.
Ross, 45, died by lethal injection at Osborn Correctional Institution in Somers and was pronounced dead at 2:25 a.m. "The execution of Michael Bruce Ross has been carried out," Warden Christine Whidden said. About 300 people had gathered outside the prison. A Cornell University graduate and former insurance agent, Ross had been sent to death row for the murders of four young women and girls in Connecticut in the 1980s, and he confessed to four more killings in Connecticut and New York.
The previous fall, Ross had announced that he was abandoning his remaining appeals because the victims' families had suffered enough. "I owe these people. I killed their daughters," he said. Public defenders and his family argued that years under a death sentence had left him unable to make that choice, and two psychiatrists testified that he was mentally incompetent; two other experts disagreed. In April 2005 a judge again found him competent. On the eve of the execution, a federal appeals court and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit filed on behalf of his father, and the courts also turned away his sister's attempt to intervene.
Edwin Shelley, whose 14-year-old daughter Leslie was Ross's 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," he said.
Ross remains the only person executed in Connecticut since 1960; the state abolished the death penalty for future crimes in 2012, and its Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 2015.
Sources
- State v. Santiago, 318 Conn. 1 (2015), Connecticut Supreme Court (via Justia)
- Conn. serial killer executed by lethal injection, NBC News / Associated Press