By Martha J.H. Elliott
The Connecticut Law Tribune
April 29, 1996
From any perspective, the story of Michael Ross is an American tragedy. It is the story of the waste of at least nine lives -- -the lives of the eight women whom Ross brutally raped and murdered, and his own, now destined to be spent in a cell or to end on a gurney if he is executed by the state of Connecticut. It is the story of a troubled farm family and the destructive mental illness that it may have spawned. And it is the story of an imperfect justice system given the responsibility of deciding the ultimate punishment.
The final chapter of this story is yet to be written. It began in November 1995, when, after several months of one-on-one negotiations with the state's attorney, Ross -- a convicted serial killer whose death sentence but not conviction was overturned by the state Supreme Court in July 1994 -- signed a stipulation offering to forego a full-blown penalty hearing in his case and accept death for his crimes. This Wednesday, May 1, the justices of the state's highest court will listen to arguments as to whether they should answer seven procedural questions concerning the unusual stipulation. Their decision will be the next step in the legal maze through which Ross must walk to determine whether he lives or dies.
Why does a physically healthy man with an IQ of 122 opt for death over life? Why is Ross, who is morally opposed to the death penalty and who churns out articles expressing that opinion, willing to accept execution for himself? Is the prospect of life imprisonment so grim that death becomes a more palatable option? Is Ross' offer indeed genuine? To those who have followed Ross' case, his subsequent crusade to expose alleged misconduct on the part of the state, his one-man article-writing campaign against the death penalty, and his burning desire for the world to understand his mental illness, his actions can be baffling, even downright contradictory.
Because of the significance of Ross' case -- he is the first man sentenced to death in Connecticut in over a quarter of a century -- and its potential legal precedent, the Law Tribune editors decided that it was important to understand Ross' decision. This article is the result of six months of interviews with Ross, his lawyers, prosecutors, police and others intimately familiar with his case.
Contrasts
Michael Ross is a puzzle. If you met him in a supermarket line, you would never suspect that you were standing next to a serial killer. He is soft-spoken, self-effacing, and even funny. Although his appearance has changed since he was arrested in 1984 -- he has gained 75 pounds due to medication he takes and now wears a prison-style crew cut -- Ross still appears almost geeky in his over-sized glasses, and not the least bit menacing.
Ross, a Cornell University graduate, is articulate, but often slips back into an aw-shucks farm boy dialect in which he uses double negatives, faulty grammar and a healthy number of ain'ts. He has a mild-mannered charm that is either disarming or, some say, manipulative and cunning. He and his psychologists acknowledge that his highly developed sense of denial sometimes hides the truth from him. Yet to those who have known him longest -- his lawyers, his advisers, even reporters who have followed his case -- -he seems incapable of lying. He speaks of murders and masturbation with a clinical lack of affect, yet appears on the verge of tears when talking about issues he deems important.
When you ask him a question that he finds difficult to answer, he often deflects it with an inappropriate nervous laugh or a joke. How has he managed to keep his sense of humor while on death row all these years? "I don't know. I must be crazy," he quips.
Karen Clark, who covered his case for The Day of New London, says, "If I were walking down a dark alley and I heard footsteps behind me and turned around and saw Michael Ross, I'd be relieved."
But if that had happened between 1981 and 1984, she probably would have also been dead. During that period, Michael Ross raped and murdered eight women and attacked at least five more -- -all teen-agers or young women just barely out of their teens.
According to Ross' psychiatrists, the murders were the result of the fact that he is a sexual sadist who could not control himself. "You are talking about someone who, should he be strolling down the street one day and see a nubile and naked 17-year-old female, his first inclination would be to kill her. Now that's a strange person," observes Peter Scillieri, one of the public defenders who represented Ross.
"People differ from one another in terms of the sexual cravings that they do or don't experience," says Dr. Fred Berlin of Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic, who testified for Ross as an expert witness. "And when that powerful sex drive gets attached to the wrong types of persons, such as children, or attached to the wrong types of behaviors, like sadistic behaviors, it still craves satisfaction, and yet it craves it in a way that when satisfied is going to cause great danger."
According to the state, he is a cold-blooded killer, a rapist who covered up his crimes by murder. As former New London State's Attorney C. Robert Satti Sr. put it in closing arguments during the penalty phase of his 1987 trial, "No way does the fact that a man is a sexual sadist say it's all right for him to go out and pick up any woman he wants, especially little girls, targets of opportunity, [pick] them up, rape them; and when you're done with it, kill them. No way, ladies and gentlemen, even if you find sexual sadism."
The jury agreed with Satti. It took them only 86 minutes to decide his guilt in June of 1987 on charges of killing four women, and only four hours to decide that there were no mitigating factors in his case, a decision that essentially recommended the death penalty.
Sick, Not Evil
But you needn't have the state's attorney present to remind you of Ross' crimes. Ross will do it himself. "I have a mental illness, and I couldn't control myself," says Ross, sitting on a cold, round cement cylinder in the visiting area off death row, which is now housed at Northern Correctional Institute in Somers. "But whenever you look at me you have to remember that there are eight bodies behind me. I killed those women, and I did nothing to stop myself for three years. And because of that I'm guilty."
Ross, who will turn 37 in July, explains that his decision to accept death is part of a slow metamorphosis that he has undergone, aided by the catalysts of medication -- DeproLupron, which nearly eliminates any testosterone level -- soul searching, and the nine years he has spent on Connecticut's death row. He sees it as a logical progression from his 1992 decision to end his appeals, and his only moral choice.
He first articulated his position in a September 1994 letter to prosecutor Satti: "Please allow me to go into the courtroom and admit to my actions; to accept responsibility for my actions; and to accept the death penalty as punishment for those actions. I'm not asking you to do this for me, but for the families involved who don't deserve to suffer further and for the families who, in some small way, might gain a sense of peace of mind by these actions and my execution."
In a letter written this month to the Law Tribune, he explains his feelings more exactly: "The real issue boils down to two simple facts. One, I raped and murdered eight women. Two, I am responsible for those actions and the consequences of those actions on the families of my victims. How and why I did these things is irrelevant. These questions may bear on my legal culpability, but they don't negate my moral responsibility. . . . I am not an evil person, but merely a sick person. I don't want to be hated and despised -- I don't want people cheering at my execution. I get concerned with how others perceive me. It is self-centeredness. . . . But I have to fight the urge to protect how others perceive me because in my case it carries a dreadful cost. And in the end which is more important: how others perceive you or how you perceive yourself? I have a responsibility to the families of my victims. . . . To allow them to be harmed, or equally important to not prevent them from being harmed when it is in my power to do so, is simply wrong. If I allowed that to happen it would affect how I perceive myself, for in my mind it would take me one step closer to being exactly the person Satti portrays me as being."
Moral? Or Manipulative?
When he killed the women, Ross explains, he was out of control. Now he has controlled his violent fantasies, and that has also given him control over causing any additional pain to the families of his victims. Going forward with a full-blown penalty hearing would hurt the families. Because of that, he says, he can't morally let the penalty hearing take place.
"That's because he is a morally responsible person," says Scillieri. "A classic demonstration of an intact moral outlook: `I've done a bad thing. Having already done that, I wish I could have stopped myself from doing it, but nevertheless, I've done it. The least I could do now is to admit it and to take myself out of circulation so that no one else be harmed, and about that I feel even worse than about the act itself, since I can't control myself from committing the act, but I certainly damn well can march down to the police station so that it won't happen again. And for that, I'm guilty as charged.' A moral response."
Detective Michael Malchik, the chief investigator in the case, has little sympathy for Ross. He expresses concern that Ross is disingenuous in his offer to die and will use it as a mitigating factor in a new penalty phase. He adds that if Ross really wants to spare the families pain, he would stop granting press interviews, which make the families "go berserk" and "hurt these people over and over and make them so sad." Malchik tells of being called to the house of one of the families in the middle of the night and of trying to stop the father from trying to strangle himself to see how long it would take to die as his daughter did.
"Not a day goes by [that they do not have pain]. . . . He's hurting these people terribly by doing this. I doubt the sincerity of what he's doing. How does a mother and father get over it? . . . Their life is over. He's destroyed their life. He's destroyed these people." Malchik also speculates that Ross has made his offer only for the limelight of being the first person on death row to be put to death.
Although Satti is hesitant to make comments about the ongoing case for fear of violating the rules of professional responsibility, he does echo Malchik's remarks about hurting the families. And he says that Ross "must realize that every time he makes a statement for publication about these cases, he does exactly that. Prime examples of this are the article he wrote for Northeast magazine in March 1995, his agreeing to numerous TV interviews and his making comment for this very article that you are writing."
Ross responds by saying that the families need not read anything that he writes or says. He says that he has turned down many invitations to comment and that he comments only when the press is undertaking a long investigation rather than seeking a two-minute clip on the nightly news. He adds that if Satti believes that he is making the offer so that he can use it for mitigation, Ross will publicly state that it will not be used for mitigation should there ever be another full-blown penalty phase.
"I think it's insane," says M. Fred DeCaprio, one of Ross' defense attorneys, speaking of the stipulation. "I understand what he wants to do. It's sincere. . . . There's not a doubt in my mind about that, but I think it's ill-advised. I don't think he's going to be able to accomplish what he wants to do even if it happens the way he wants or hopes. . . . I think it's a bad precedent. It's a dangerous precedent in terms of capital sentencing in the state."
Dr. Walter Borden, a New Britain psychiatrist who testified for Ross in his trial and says he spent more time on Ross' case than any other, explains, "He was obsessed with death, a kind of ultimate perversion, as a normal person is obsessed with life. . . . I think what he is involved in is nothing short of state-assisted suicide."
Borden sees great value in keeping Ross alive, "He should be studied. . . . I think the state has an opportunity to understand how people come to be this way," which, he says, would help prevent other needless deaths.
Some lawyers worry that the stipulation itself is dangerous. "Prosecutors could lean on defendants by saying, `If you stipulate [to] the death penalty, we won't prosecute your brother or we'll give your wife a lesser sentence,' " says David Golub, of Stamford's Silver, Golub and Teitel. Golub represents Sedrick H. Cobb, a fellow death row inmate of Ross'.
Ann Cole, of Ann Cole Opinion Research and Analysis in New York City, who is a member of Ross' defense team but opposes the stipulation, asks, "What happens when [a defendant's] family says, `Don't put us through a trial. Just stipulate [to] the death penalty?' " A psychologist, she explains that many persons accused of capital crimes are "depressed, suicidal and remorseful" and susceptible to psychological pressure.
The Underlying Problem
Although sparing the families pain is his primary concern, Ross has another reason for doing what he is doing. He also believes that the criminal-justice system failed him and that he can never get a fair hearing. He claims the police twisted facts, the prosecutor kept important exculpatory information from the jury and the judge was blatantly biased against him in an effort merely to secure his death warrant.
"I thought a trial was a search for the truth. I was naive. I thought I was going to go in there, and they were going to give me answers. I didn't know myself what the truth was. I didn't know what the psychiatrists were going to say until I heard them in court. . . . But a trial isn't a search for truth. It's the state versus the defense, and there isn't anyone interested in finding the truth," says Ross.
After his conviction and the imposition of six death sentences, Ross became obsessed with proving that the system was corrupt. He petitioned many state agencies to look at this case -- to investigate the state police, to censure the judge and the prosecutor. Then-Chief State's Attorney John Kelly responded in a June 1988 letter that the complaints involved matters that occurred during trial and "should be addressed to your attorneys so that they can determine whether or not to include them in your appeal. . . . This office will not investigate any of your complaints." The Judicial Review Council and the Statewide Grievance Committee also dismissed Ross' complaints.
"Nobody cared. Nobody cared," says Ross.
Monsignor John D. Gilmartin, Ross' spiritual adviser, explains, "Michael thinks he won't get a proper hearing of all the issues and that is tragic. It's a disgrace . . . but he doesn't want to go through the ugliness of the trial and not try to understand his illness." Saying that Ross' biggest nightmare is facing the families again, Gilmartin adds, "It isn't that he wants to die, he has no death wish. . . . But it is a frustration that nobody understands his illness."
Farm Life
To understand Ross' decision, one must look at the details of his life, pieced together from interviews with Ross, people who know him well, his psychiatrists and trial transcripts.
If ever anyone was born under crossed stars, it was Michael Bruce Ross. According to hospital and court records, his mother and father, Daniel and Patricia Ross, were forced to marry when his mother was in high school because Pat became pregnant with Michael. Pat wanted no part of the marriage or of being the wife of a chicken farmer in Brooklyn, Conn. Into this unhappy union, Michael was born on July 26, 1959.
Five years, four children, two abortions later, Pat Ross tried to run away to North Carolina to be with the man whom she had considered her true love since she was 15, according to hospital records in the first of two psychiatric admissions. After being retrieved from North Carolina, she was admitted to Norwich Hospital because she "has talked of suicide, has beaten and struck children" and because her husband had taken the children away from her, say the reports of the admitting doctor.
Much evidence was produced during the trial about his mother's alleged abuse of Ross, which ranged from beatings to front-yard burnings of his mattress when she caught her son masturbating. Ross' siblings spoke at trial of how Michael often received the brunt of their mother's anger.
Borden, one of the psychiatrists who evaluated Ross, added, "All you have to do is look at the Norwich hospital records . . . and right there in black and white they talked about the child abuse going on. . . . And I'll tell you something, that was back at a time when it wasn't required to report abuse. So if it's reported, it's pretty serious. You better believe it."
Borden also points out that Ross had an uncle who committed suicide when he was 14 and Michael about 8 years old. Borden says that there was convincing evidence that the uncle, who was Ross' babysitter, sexually abused him in a way similar to the way Ross abused his victims. Although Ross was very close to the uncle, he says he remembers almost nothing about him.
After the uncle's death, one of his jobs, the killing of sick and malformed chicks, fell to 8-year-old Michael. Ross killed them the same way he later killed his victims. "His mother said that she wouldn't allow the other children to kill the chickens because it was too disturbing to them. `Let Michael do it,' " comments Dr. Borden. (Pat Ross has changed her name and moved out of state. Ross himself does not know where she is.)
Ross himself has almost no memory of any problems in the family. To him it was a cherished farm life. "I liked the lifestyle. It's a hard life, but I think it taught me a lot of good things. . . . Like you have to get up and feed the chickens every day. Just because you don't want to get up in the morning, you got to get up and do what has to be done. And if a piece of equipment is broke and it's 4 o'clock in the afternoon and it's quitting time and the chickens ain't been fed, that means you gonna miss your supper because you got to be sure the chickens get fed before you get fed. . . . I think a lot of kids today, I don't think they have the responsibility that I grew up with on the farm."
By the time Ross was in high school, his father relied on him heavily. "My dad knew that if he took a weekend off and was going somewhere, I would make sure that the eggs would be packed and the chickens would be fed, and everything would get done."
College Days
Ross dreamed of becoming a farmer, and he decided to go to Cornell to study agricultural economics. He went off to college with strong middle class values and conservative opinions: He believed in the death penalty and he thought that the insanity defense was some lame legal technicality designed to get the guilty off. His dream was to graduate from college, get married, "go back to Brooklyn, and have a family."
Cornell, which Ross entered in 1977, began as the happiest time of his life. It wasn't long before he established a steady relationship with a woman in the ROTC program. But, Ross says, things went bad after she became pregnant and had an abortion. He acknowledges that he was not supportive of her either emotionally or financially. However, the final blow to their relationship was when she signed her four-year commitment papers for the service. "I didn't want to wait four years for a wife," says Ross. "I was stupid."
Soon Ross' dream of the perfect farm family began to be crowded by other fantasies -- disturbing, violent, sexual fantasies. During his sophomore year, he began stalking women. Despite the fact that he had fallen in love with and gotten engaged to another woman, named Connie, Ross' urges intensified. He says he tried to deny that it was happening to him and told himself it would stop. Sometime during his senior year he committed his first rape. Later that year he raped and strangled another woman and threw her body into Cornell's well-known gorge.
Ross says he later tried to kill himself by jumping from a cliff above Lake Cayuga's waters, where Cornell is perched, but "was too chicken to do it." He convinced himself "that it would never happen again. I wouldn't hurt anyone else." But it did happen again. And before he was caught, eight women would be dead.
Ross says that he has no distinct memories of any of the crimes. "I don't have any real specific memories. It's more of a jumble. It's hard to explain. Remember those old black and white movies you used to see in high school, and they are all spliced and then they jump, and that's sort of what I remember. I remember bits and pieces. Dr. Borden says that I reconstruct things and try to fill in the spots that I don't know because some of the things I told police ended up not being true," he says.
The Catch
Enter Detective Michael Malchik, a strapping, handsome Norman Rockwell version of a state trooper. Malchik had been called in 1983 to analyze the Tammy Williams case to see if he could come up with any new angles. At the time, Williams was listed as a missing person. The detective who sat next to him had the Deborah Taylor case and the two began to compare notes. "I started to see similarities between the two. We don't have murders that occur on a daily basis in an area like Danielson, and I saw that the women were the same size, were roughly seen about six miles apart . . . and I forget, there were a number of things that looked like they were similar to me, so I said I thought they were done by the same person."
While he was working on that theory, Wendy Baribeault disappeared. Four days later her body was found, and Malchik was assigned as chief investigator.
By this time Ross had become almost brazen in his crimes. Several witnesses had seen him turn his car around abruptly and in broad daylight approach Baribeault from behind as she walked down the road. Malchik had the make and color of car -- a blue Toyota. He had a description of the perpetrator, and the first door he knocked on from the printout of the owners of 3,600 blue Toyotas was that of Michael Ross, who, after his parents' divorce and the sale of the egg farm, had become an insurance salesman living in Jewett City.
Although the spectacled Ross did not match the composite sketches, and his car was not exactly what Malchik was looking for, Malchik had a strong suspicion that this was his man. He describes the June 28, 1984, visit to Ross' apartment as a "roller coaster ride." Every time he was ready to go, Ross would drop him a crumb that would make him think that he should ask more questions, Malchik says. When Ross told him he had been arrested twice for sex offenses, Malchik decided to bring him down to the station for more questioning. Ross said he asked if he could come down after work at 4 p.m., but that Malchik said no, he had to make a statement that morning. Malchik denies this. Ross also contends that he asked to call his father, but that he was not allowed to do so until after all the confessions had been signed. Malchik also denies this.
For the next four hours, Malchik gained Ross' confidence. They talked about his family. They talked about college and Connie. According to Ross, they talked hypothetically about serial killers and Baribeault's murder. (Malchik puts this discussion much later in the day.) It was by all accounts exquisite police work, because Malchik was able to get Ross to confess to not only the Baribeault murder, but to five others, including two that the police had classified as runaways.
Ross says he felt like Malchik was his friend, and that he and the detective were going to "solve" his case. He now feels that Malchik betrayed him by allegedly twisting certain facts to make them sound much worse in order to prove extreme cruelty -- an aggravating factor in the death penalty equation.
One of the important issues that would later come up in the Ross appeal was when Ross was in custody, and whether he was read his Miranda rights as soon as a reasonable person would assume he was in custody. Both Ross and Malchik agree that Ross confessed to both Malchik and his partner before he was read his rights. Both also agree that Ross asked Malchik if he thought he killed Wendy Baribeault and that Malchik said yes, and that Malchik felt that Ross would do it again. Ross then confessed to Malchik and again to Malchik's partner. The defense contends that at that point Ross was in custody and had been seized illegally without probable cause. Malchik contends that Ross knew he could leave at any time.
Rhode Island or Connecticut?
Two years later, in 1986, the issue of Malchik's credibility arose. Although the state originally claimed that the Leslie Shelley and April Brunais murders were committed in Connecticut, there was testimony in a 1986 hearing that they were committed in Rhode Island, though the girls were picked up in Connecticut and their bodies were later hidden in this state as well. The defense moved to dismiss those murder, sexual assault and kidnap-murder charges on the ground that the Connecticut court did not have jurisdiction.
The state claimed that the crimes occurred in Connecticut, but that even if they hadn't, Connecticut had continuing jurisdiction because the crimes began and ended in the state. Satti produced a report written by Malchik only weeks before the proceeding containing what Malchik said were Ross' additional directions to the crime scene -- directions that, Malchik says, were inadvertently left out of the written and taped statements taken two years earlier, and which Ross says he never gave. Those directions, Satti contended, would place the crime scene in Connecticut.
However, during the hearing the defense produced strips of cloth found in a secluded area in the Exeter, R.I., woods that purportedly matched a slip cover from Ross' apartment and a missing ligature found around one of the girl's necks. The defense lawyers were also able to show on the taped statement that Ross had offered to take the officers to the crime scene three times, despite Malchik's memory to the contrary.
In what Scillieri describes as "my favorite day in court," Superior Court Judge Seymour Hendel blew up during the closed hearing and on the record lambasted the prosecutor and the police. According to the transcript, Scillieri and Malchik, Hendel yelled at the prosecutor and threw a map at the investigator. At the conclusion, he said, "Gentleman, there is no question in my mind this happened in Rhode Island. There is absolutely not one scintilla of doubt it happened in Rhode Island. I disbelieve the testimony of both officers, Malchik and Officer Griffin [Malchik's partner]. . . . Two officers that I feel lied before me on something absolutely unnecessary to lie about. . . . Officer Malchik did a fantastic investigation. All the Court can say is I am glad it is a . . . sealed record. They did not want Rhode Island to get involved in this case. Why I will never know. . . . It bothers me, it bothers me greatly. At some point this record will become open when this case is over. Let the chips fall where they may."
But Hendel threw out only some of the counts and would not grant the defense's motion to reopen the suppression hearing on Ross' confessions. (The suppression hearing had been held a year earlier. During that hearing, Ross' defense had attempted to impeach Malchik but was stopped by Hendel.)
When the record was finally unsealed in 1989, two years after Ross' conviction, Hendel retracted his criticism of the police officers. "[W]ith the benefit of hindsight, I realized that the officers made a judgment call at the time based on the information which was available to them, that it wasn't important to go to the site of the killings, since they were looking to secure corroboration of the defendant's confession' and they felt that by going to the place where the bodies were, they would get that corroboration. . . . I understand their testimony now; and I do believe that they testified truthfully during the hearing."
Ross is less bothered by this episode now, but it plagued him for years. It was the first of many experiences that convinced him that no one was interested in truth or justice "in a case like mine, where there is so much emotion and so many careers are at stake."
Malchik, now an investigator for the state's attorney's office who recently passed the state bar exam, is affronted by the mere questioning of his credibility. "I've testified many times, and they always question your veracity and credibility," Malchik says, "and that comes with the job, but . . . I went out of my way to be fair. . . . [T]hat's very important to me, my truthfulness, my credibility."
Saying that he does not want to criticize Hendel, Malchik says he believes that the original outburst was caused by tension between Hendel and Satti. "Judge Hendel believed that you could not get the death penalty under the present law. Judge Hendel wants to move his docket, which any judge does. . . . He used to argue with Satti all the time about this case causing him problems on his docket. He was not going to win and it was a waste of time to go through all these things," Malchik continues.
Hendel declines to be interviewed on the matter and refers to the transcripts of the two proceedings.
Hands and Knees
But it was the 1987 trial itself that was Ross' biggest disappointment, and a revival of it is now his biggest fear. Ross was tried for four murders. He pleaded guilty to two Windham County murders and, at his request, was given the maximum sentence of 120 years.
It lasted for more than four months in 1987. Desperate not to make eye contact with anyone, he says, every morning he would go over in his mind what he would say to the guards as he walked "through the gauntlet" of victims' families and reporters in the hall from the elevator to the courtroom in Bridgeport's Golden Hill courthouse, where the trial had been moved because of publicity.
Ross was soon disillusioned by what he describes as the blatant bias of Superior Court Judge G. Sarsfield Ford and the aggressive tactics of Satti. Near the end of the trial, for instance, Satti got down on his hands and knees to re-enact the murders for the jury. Ross also feels that Satti kept important exculpatory information from the jury -- the fact that his own psychiatrist felt there were mitigating factors. He feels that no one wanted to understand his mental illness, and that as the result of all these things, he didn't -- and couldn't -- get a fair trial.
The Judge: Rolling His Eyes, Clipping His Nails?
"Judge Ford is unique," says Scillieri, Ross' trial counsel, adding that he has never had another trial experience like that one. DeCaprio goes further.
"All of us have had judges take more active roles, but I've never had it to that extent," says DeCaprio. He says that he always believed that Ford "was tremendously offended by the natures of the crimes. . . . And it was very subtle. . . . So there are a lot of times there is nothing for the record. It's done with inflection, gesture, it's devastating. . . . And I thought we had a pretty compelling case, but [because of Ford], I thought a lot of it never got heard."
Clark, the reporter for The Day, agrees. She says that Ford would open mail, clip his nails and act bored or roll his eyes during defense testimony. She also says that his tone was demeaning towards DeCaprio and Scillieri. "My feeling is that if somebody is on trial for their life, the judge should at least appear to be interested while the court is in session," says Clark. "The judge had a lack of respect for the defense, and I think the jury picked up on that. . . . I really feel there was bias shown against the defense and that it was inappropriate and just on that alone, [Ross] couldn't have gotten a fair trial."
Perhaps the most blatant demonstration is Ford's alleged treatment of defense witnesses. No sooner had Tina Ross testified on June 17 that her brother had grown up as an emotionally deprived, unloved child than Ford launched a string of questions that five observers say was clearly intended to impeach her and show disbelief. "When you were growing up, did you have birthdays, did you celebrate Christmas, did you have exchange of gifts, were you in the Girl Scouts, did you get awards, were you in school, were you in school plays and did [your father] . . . provide an education for you and all the children?"
"It was brutal," says DeCaprio, who objected to the rhetorical questioning during the trial.
Two of Ross' psychiatric witnesses also feel that Ford stepped over the line. Psychiatrist Borden says that Ford would whisper disparaging remarks to him while he was testifying and that other neutral observers said that the judge would make facial expressions and roll his eyes while Borden was testifying. He says he felt personally and professionally attacked by the judge at times.
Dr. Berlin says, "I just don't feel that we were treated -- the doctors who were testifying to things that might have mitigated on Mr. Ross' behalf -- I didn't think we were allowed to be heard very much, and I didn't think we were dealt with in a very polite and respectful fashion."
Berlin filed a complaint with the Judicial Review Council in June of 1987. In that complaint he writes, "During my three days of testimony, I was repeatedly treated by Judge Ford in a disrespectful, condescending, and in my opinion, often prejudicial manner. It is my understanding that he treated several other professionals who testified at that hearing in a similar fashion." Berlin goes on to say that he had testified many times and never experienced this type of situation before.
Two years later, the Judicial Review Council informed Berlin that it had "completed and terminated its investigation" and "determined that there is not sufficient evidence to substantiate probable cause of misconduct" and that the complaint was dismissed.
Asked recently to comment on these charges, Ford writes that it would be improper for him to comment since the Ross case is still pending.
But Satti is very willing to defend Ford. "I believe that the criticism of Judge Ford that you have related to me is `sour grapes' and not deserving of direct response," he writes in a statement to the Law Tribune. "Much of it can even be characterized as `childish.' " Judge Ford was an experienced trial judge who believed in controlling his courtroom and the conduct of the trial in strict accord with the rules of practice and case and statutory law. To fault him for this admirable characteristic does a disservice not only to the judiciary of this state, but to the citizens themselves, who rely on our judges to enforce those rules. . . . In my opinion, Judge Ford was fair and impartial and in controlling the conduct of the trial, and the specific items of criticisms you have related to me are completely unjustified.
The Grandpa
Then there is the matter of Satti's style. Unused to aggressive courtroom theatrics, Ross was and is cowed by Satti. But DeCaprio shrugs and says, "that's how Mr. Satti tries a case. . . . He's dogged. He's a bulldog. He'll go ask something and he'll worry it to death and if he can't do it one way, he'll try it another and he'll ultimately wear you down."
Scillieri laughs, "Mr. Satti? Oh, he's just a nice old grandpa."
However, one of Satti's trial tactics, and Judge Ford's decisions, ultimately lead to Ross' death sentence being overturned. That concerns a confidential letter written by Dr. Robert Miller, the state's psychiatric witness, to Satti. In the third paragraph of the Feb. 15, 1987, "Dear Bob" letter sent to Satti just as jury selection was about to begin, Miller says, "After deliberation I can't see how I could testify against psychopathology playing a sufficient role in defendant's behavior to mitigate the type of penalty. If it had been only one or two incidents I could have held up, but the repetitive nature of the acts as well as past history of assaultive behavior make my (our) position untenable. Accordingly I must back out of the case, even if it is such a late date."
Aware of his legal responsibility, Satti immediately turned over that paragraph to the defense. However, he did not turn over the first, second and fourth paragraphs until Ford ordered him to do so near the end of the guilt phase of the trial. In the first paragraph, Miller states that he has had a great deal of time "to go over in my mind how feasible the stand we had anticipated I would take might be." And the second paragraph states that the result of this rumination is a "demurral and a reverse of my earlier intemperate stand, which was based more on emotion than reason."
Miller concludes with, "If it is of any assistance to you, I have had to see an ENT specialist several times recently, and will have to see him in a month again at which time I may have to enter a hospital for further tests, so you could tell the Court I have to be excused for reasons of health."
"It is outrageous," says defense attorney Golub. "If this weren't a death penalty case and the prosecutor didn't turn this letter over and the state's witness wrote this kind of letter, there would be ethical hearings. This isn't a close question. Dr. Miller testified for the state in hundreds of cases. He was one of the leading state psychiatric experts in Connecticut for a long time and for him to write this type of letter and for him to write it as a `Dear Bob' letter and say here is my excuse for not testifying if you want to hide me, it's terrible."
Satti says, "I can make no comment on your questions relating to Dr. Miller and his report and letter. In fairness, however, I'm sure you are aware that I called Dr. Miller as a witness fully expecting him to testify as to his opinion as to Mr. Ross' psychiatric condition; thus making him subject to full cross-examination by the defense. When defense counsel objected to his testimony about Mr. Ross, and was not willing to affirmatively waive any possible confidential communications, I did not further press the issue."
The transcript reveals that Satti did indeed stop examining Miller because of the defense objection. However, Judge Ford said that there was no need for a waiver because the defense had raised insanity as a defense. Also, the defense had already withdrawn its objection.
Later, at both the guilt and the penalty phase of Ross' trial, Ross' defense tried to introduce Miller's letter into evidence and both times Satti objected. Ford refused both times to let the letter in -- at the guilt phase because, Ford said, it went to mitigation, not guilt; and at the penalty hearing, because Miller was not present to testify. The defense did not want to call Miller because Satti would have been able to cross-examine his own witness. At the guilt phase of the trial, Satti had cleverly avoided asking Miller any questions about Ross himself.
The result? The jury never heard the fact that Miller, the state's own witness, thought that Ross suffered from a mental disease, sexual sadism. Nor did they hear the most important testimony: that he felt there was mitigation and that the death penalty was not warranted.
Ross was found guilty and sentenced to die in 1987. When the case was appealed, the high court threw out Ross' six death sentences in 1994 -- based on the fact that the judge hadn't let in Miller's letter or report.
Initially Ross was outraged that the jury never heard about Miller's letter. However, he now says sarcastically that the irony is that had the jury heard the letter, it wouldn't have made any ultimate difference. They still would have found no mitigation despite the unanimity of the doctors, the high court would not have overturned his sentence, and he'd be dead by now.
Ross doesn't understand why the court didn't just state that as a matter of law he had a mental illness, on which all the experts agreed. Had the high court done that or overturned his guilt as well as his sentence, Ross might have been willing to go through a new trial.
"The Supreme Court made it easy for me," says Ross. "If I thought I had a shot of proving I was insane and a shot at spending the rest of my life in Whiting [the state hospital for the criminally insane] instead of a criminal setting like this, then I would have a difficult decision, because then I would have to weigh my rights and needs versus my responsibilities to the victims families." Ross also says that if offered a life sentence he would accept it, and then spend his life in prison being as productive as he could.
Few are willing to comment on the broad question of whether Ross got a fair trial. Golub sees it in terms of all death penalty cases: "This is what happens because the stakes are so high. If you link that [the Miller letter] with the Hendel hearing, I've never heard such outrageous testimony from cops in my life. . . . The point is this:
This is every death penalty case."
Scillieri is more philosophical. "I'm not going to sit here and defend the system. . . . The system is just about as imperfect as the people that make it up, and that's just another reason why the death penalty is so atrocious."
To Scillieri, the problem is that you don't have perfect knowledge or perfect jurors acting on behalf of a perfect just being. "So I guess what I'm telling you in the great run of cases, as much as it pained me being a lawyer in this particular case, I am not as aghast about what went on, but somebody can lose their life as a result of these imperfections. We ought to be really thinking about, given the fact that the system will always be imperfect, maybe even willfully derailed, we have to be very very careful about whether we are going to put someone's life at risk on the basis of the decisions of that system."
Today's Fantasies
In the nine years since his trial, Ross has gone through many changes. The most significant was that he was put on anti-depressants and on other drugs that in effect chemically castrate him. He had been tortured by his violent fantasies for two years after the trial. The thought of being taken off one of the drugs, Depro-Lupron, is unthinkable. "I couldn't do life without it," says Ross. With the medication, Ross has been able to do a lot of thinking, thinking about what he did, thinking about the parents of the victims, and has come to the conclusion that accepting death without another court trial is his moral obligation.
To keep busy, he spends a lot of his time writing articles against the death penalty, learning to be a Braille transcriber, and promoting the death row support project through which he has found over 300 pen pals for death row inmates. He also helped establish the death row law library at Northern and continues to try to get donations of used books. Currently they are looking for an old set of U.S. Supreme Court Reporters.
When he is in his cell, no longer plagued by the violent fantasies, Ross imagines himself back at Cornell with his first girlfriend, the one who had the abortion. In his dream world, "We had the baby, and we moved in together and got married. And we finished my junior and senior year with the baby. I'm quite the father, you know," he chuckles. "You see, she was an engineering student, so I used to take the baby with me to classes. I always had an easy time in my classes. . . . It was a good kid. It was a girl, Ashley. I was a student teacher for [agriculture] class, and I used to have a help class on Saturdays that the students would attend. I always brought Ashley there, and she was a big hit with the girls."
And then there is reality, and he thinks of the parents of his victims, crying on the stand. "How can I even look at them?" he asks. "How can they ever forgive me?. . . . I can't even say I'm sorry. What if I killed your daughter? `I'm sorry.' You know how pitiful that sounds?"
And then Michael Ross knows what he has to do. In his recent letter to the Law Tribune, he writes: "Right now I have nothing left except who I am, and I can't let anyone take that away from me, even if it costs me in how I am perceived by others. I have to do what I believe is the right thing to do, even if it is misinterpreted, misunderstood and/ or unappreciated by others -- to do anything less would be to betray who `Michael Ross' really is. . . . And ultimately, how I perceive myself is far more important than how others perceive me."
Even if it means death.
(Connecticut Law Tribune is an affiliate publication of Court TV.)
Copyright 1996, American Lawyer Media.
