Michael Ross dead?(on the right)

NEW YORK, JANUARY 11

CATHOLICS who attend Mass in Fairfield County, Connecticut, on Sunday, January 16, will know that in doing so they are being dutiful, it being Church law that the sabbath should be observed. But this Sunday, the faithful will be asked to declare themselves as dutiful also in a different sense--by signing a petition posted at the door at the behest of Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport.

The proximate cause of the current commotion is the impending death of Michael Ross. Much attention fastens on him because he would be the first person executed in Connecticut in 44 years, and the first ever to be executed by injection.

There is a lot that is special about Ross, other than his singularity as a condemned man this side of Texas whose execution might actually take place. Most notably different about him is that he has requested that the state get on with the execution. This is tangentially inconvenient for the defense squadron who have kept him alive for 20 years, which is when he committed his most recent murder.

That was the eighth girl he killed, and one of several he also raped. The Hartford Courant sent a reporter down to Texas to accompany the Connecticut official who wanted firsthand knowledge of how actually to implement the law on the books. The two were among the witnesses at the execution of James Scott Porter. He was already in jail for murder, but had now smashed a fellow inmate to death with a rock. Porter was the 337th person to die in Texas of the lethal injection: the 337th murderer to die, not the 337th Texan to die at the hands of a murderer--that number is many times larger.

What Bishop Lori is asking churchgoers to do is sign a petition to repeal the death penalty in Connecticut. The Connecticut bishops are of course hoping that Ross's life can yet be saved, notwithstanding that he wants to die, that the Connecticut courts have found nothing to invalidate the sentencing, that the U.S. Supreme Court declines to intervene, and that the governor of Connecticut has said she finds no reason to commute the ...