Posted on 01/06/2005 1:05:07 PM PST by Luddite Patent Counsel
HARTFORD, Conn. (CNS) -- As the date neared for Connecticut's first execution in nearly 45 years, the state's Catholic conference joined forces with the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty in a petition drive to end the death penalty. The petition was distributed to every parish in the Hartford Archdiocese, along with a letter from Archbishop Henry J. Mansell of Hartford reminding Catholics, "The Gospel mandates us to respect human life from conception to natural death." Michael Ross, 45, is scheduled to be executed Jan. 26. He was sentenced to death in 1987 for murdering four teenage girls in the early 1980s. He also was sentenced to life in prison for murdering two other young women and to 25 years in prison for murdering another. He has admitted to killing an eighth young woman, but has not been prosecuted in that case. He acknowledged raping most of the victims. Gov. M. Jodi Rell said she would not stand in the way of the scheduled execution. Ross himself has said he will not pursue any further appeals, though his father has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the lethal injection process as cruel and unusual punishment.
Executing murderers is respecting human life. If shows that we take human life seriously.
This isn't a Church affair.
This 'individual' murdered at least 7 human beings.
The bible, according to scholars, says "thou shalt not murder". Not "Thou shalt not kill."
This animal should be put to death and in MHO, that's generous.
That is absolutely true. It is also true that these slain women's blood cry out for justice!
I agree with you 100%. Today's PC movement invokes Christ's name to suit their political means too often lately.
THE RC Priest is pleading for the execution to be stopped in his own name, not in Christ's name.
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.
And the father of this piece of human garbage calls lethal injection 'cruel & unusual' - how would the father describe his son's method of killing those women?
"For your own lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning: from every animal I will require it and from human beings, each one for the blood of another, I will require a reckoning for human life.
Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person's blood be shed; for in His Own Image God made mankind"
Genesis 9:5-6
The Lord's covenant with Noah and his descendants following the Flood.
A lot of Catholics (mosty in the Norwich Diocese--where New London is located) I know have sent letters/email to the various bishops asking them to STFU.
The SOB wants to die---good! Let's accomodate him....
Excellent point, but... hook?
I thought it was a nail?
Where was Archbishop Mansell during the presidential election?It is amazing how these libs can get so quiet when the chips are down.He appears to be just another lib from New York City just like Cardinal McCarric?
It is situations like these when I think the tax exempt status should be removed from churches - no matter what the demonination.
I would be so concerned if this person escaped or was somehow paroled through the efforts of some do-gooding Libs.
The man is indeed a threat to society. Period.
I think Mansell is really off Base, since the New Catechism of the Catholic Church still allows for CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.
Some time about 1997 it became popular for the Pope to save people from the death sentence but it is not law, nor was the Pope speaking ex cathedra (Infallibly).
I am a Catholic and I would rather Bishop Mansell rally the people to get rid of the Homosexual Priests and Bishops and in the process help the thousands of victims of Sexual Abuse.
So is Mansell speaking against the teachings of the Catholic Church?
Mc Carrick is the worst.
Your logic satisfies the requirements of the current Catechism of the Catholic Church is this matter.
As someone else stated "Mansell should STFU."
"So is Mansell speaking against the teachings of the Catholic Church?"
Yes, he is. But here's the drill: speak out against abuses in the Church, get threatened; speak out against outrages against Catholic dogma, get threatened; speak out in favor of almost 2000 years of Catholic Tradition, get threatened; speak out in favor of liberal political B.S., even if it's against Catholic teachings, get promoted to Archbishop. Welcome to "Catholicism" in the United States in 2005.
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