News Flash: Killer Is A Fraud
April 12, 2005
Enough, all ready! Stop the proceedings! Order another competency examination. Yes, that's right: Let's try to determine whether Thomas Groark has lost his mind, or is he just terminally naive?
Why, oh, why, did Connecticut Superior Court Judge Patrick Clifford appoint a mergers and aquisition specialist to serve as special counsel in the Michael Ross case? This was no case for a stumbling naif, or a firm expert at pushing paper, but largely ignorant of the criminal law.
Groark is a fading star at Hartford's Day, Berry & Howard, a white shoe firm long on bills and little on trial experience. He was selected by the judge to perfect the case that Michael Ross' waiver of his right to further appeal is involuntary.
Groark called as a witness yesterday a psychiatrist who testified that the serial killer is narcissistic. He should not be executed because he is a fraud. His motive for waiving appeal is not to spare the families of his victims pain. He wants to go out in a "blaze of glory."
According to Dr. Stuart Grassian, Ross is just like Jim Jones, who in 1978 convicted 912 followers to commit mass suicide by drinking spiked Kool Aid. Why, he's also like David Koresh of Waco fame. Call the doctor Stu-of-not-so-subtle Distinctions.
Wow. So now an appeal to antipathy is supposed to persuade us not to kill? What's the subtle message: If that's what Ross wants, let's not give it to him -- now that's punishment?
Ross has been on death row since 1987. His case has been the subject of several appeals, and now all direct appeals have been lost. All that remains are the mid-court habeas petitions that are the right of every prisoner.
Only Ross chooses not to file anything more. That, also, is his right.
He fired his public defenders and acquired a private attorney to protect his interest. His execution was set. The all Hell broke loose in Connecticut. Execution delayed while a lawyer not of his choosing gets to try to persuade the judge that this waiver of further litigation is something other than knowing, voluntary and intelligent. A classic case of substituting the judgment of an officious intermeddler for the person in question.
Of course, Mike is manipulative, and of course he is narcissitic. I mean, the guy has his own web site, right from death row. That he wants to go out on his terms is hardly surprising.
What surprises is that these proceedings go on and on and on ... It illustrates why we ought not to have a death penalty. This litigation makes us look foolish.
I support Michael Ross' right to die. As one wit on this page suggested the other day, perhaps he should just refuse food and drink, and waste away. That would at least spare us the prospect of more litigation on what Mike really wants.
Who is winning the Michael Ross hearing? Mike.
What is surprising is that the Michael Ross freak show continues on and on and on ... Mr. Ross, a Cornell graduate, is a marketing genius. He has transfixed a courthouse and the state of Connecticut. We know now more than we ever really wanted to know about his psyche.
Connecticut ought simply to abolish the death penalty and spare us this costly freak show.Mikey is Self-Centered