May 18, 2005
New England and the Death Penalty
By Froma Harrop

The lethal injection that peacefully dispatched Michael Ross did far more violence to New England's sense of self than to the serial killer. The region hadn't witnessed an execution in four decades. The sight of harsh Southern customs creeping into their blue-state bastion deeply unnerved many New Englanders.

Twelve states currently do not have the death penalty. They are mostly in New England and the upper Midwest. Many others, including Connecticut, have it on the books but generally don't execute people.

Capital punishment has become a major source of anti-U.S. feelings in Europe and elsewhere. But most Europeans don't understand that capital punishment is a matter for the states, and that some states have been more enlightened than they. The French were chopping off heads 93 years after Michigan became the first state to abolish the death penalty, in 1846.

Connecticut newspapers condemned the state-sponsored killing of Ross as something alien to their culture. Connecticut must "be protective of its integrity," a New London Day editorial said. "In killing Mr. Ross, the state participates in the very crime it regards as the ultimate offense."

When Republicans campaign in New England, they distance themselves from the national party. But there's always the temptation to show their Sunbelt leaders that they can push New Englanders around -- especially on cultural matters, where the people tend to be progressive.

Connecticut's Gov. Jodi Rell, a Republican, could have issued a
reprieve to give the legislature time to consider the matter. Instead, she justified her non-action by noting Ross' horrible deeds and certain guilt. And she vowed to veto any bill that stuck down her state's death-penalty law.

Polls did show most people in Connecticut backing Ross' execution. He had brutally murdered eight women in the 1980s. But when the polls gave respondents a choice between execution and life in jail with no chance of parole, only 37 percent chose the death option.

Support for the death penalty continues to weaken in the region and throughout the country. When Gallup asked the "death" or "life without parole" question in Houston, the response was a similar 64 percent favoring life without parole. Houston is in Harris County, known as the "death-penalty capital" of the United States.

These trends have not stopped Republican Gov. Mitt Romney from trying to reactivate a death row in Massachusetts. He's come up what he ghoulishly calls a "gold standard" for capital punishment. To avoid executing innocent people, he would demand DNA or other scientific evidence of guilt. Furthermore, he would limit the death penalty to the most gruesome crimes: killing sprees, murder with torture and deadly terrorist attacks.

There's been no big outcry in Massachusetts for reinstating the death penalty. But Romney has national aspirations, and forcing capital punishment onto Massachusetts would be a fresh scalp to present his party's conservative base. (He's also been pushing laws to sharply restrict embryonic stem-cell research -- economic treason in this biotech stronghold.)

Demanding there be airtight evidence in death-penalty cases is pointless when "guilt" is not the point. No one doubts that Michael Ross was a monster or that his victims and their families suffered without measure.

"It's not about Michael Ross," explained the Rev. Walter Everett, a Methodist pastor from Hartford and anti-death-penalty activist. Everett's own son was murdered, by someone else, in the 1980s. "It's about who we are as a state or as a people."

Exactly. The death penalty certainly does not impress psychopaths. Ross actually wanted to die. He could have extended his life by pursuing appeals but didn't. And he asked Rell not to interfere with his impending execution. So in a twisted way, the governor was doing his bidding.

As Robert Nave, head of the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty, put it, "We are letting a man who is a multiple murderer ... commit state-assisted suicide in our name."

Foes of capital punishment need feel only pride for their principled position that killing is wrong, no matter who does it. Happily, their ranks are growing in the United States.

And the world should know this: Capital punishment is an American thing only in certain parts of America. Governors trying to reinstate it in places like New England are bringing in foreign ideas.

©2005 Providence Journal Co. Distributed by Creators Syndicate

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