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After years of unsuccessful schemes to end his appeals, Ross finally fired his public defenders and, in 2004, hired T.R. Paulding Jr., a lawyer with little capital-case experience who promised to help Ross die. Together, they nearly succeeded. On Oct. 6, with no defense attorneys opposing Ross's execution, the New London Superior Court quickly affirmed his right to die: lethal injection was set for Jan. 26. But his former public defenders--along with lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union, the Missionary Society of Connecticut and Ross's father--argued all the way to the Supreme Court that Ross was incompetent. They were denied every time, but the salvo of challenges and surprise affidavits slowed the system just enough to keep Ross alive.
Tremendous pressure was also building on Paulding. Sister Helen Prejean, the anti-death-penalty crusader and author of Dead Man Walking, called the devout Catholic attorney on the phone. Prejean says the conversation was blunt: "'T.R.,' I told him, 'you are the one movable part of this machinery of death.'" Eventually, a judge made an extraordinary threat to take away Paulding's law license if any new evidence about Ross's competence emerged after he had been executed. An hour from death, Ross backed down--in order to save his lawyer's neck, he says. The aborted execution cost the state of Connecticut $289,000 in wasted preparations and brought fresh anguish to the victims' families. The execution has been rescheduled for May 11, and Ross says he remains committed to die.
There was no such delay for Florida volunteer Glen Ocha, 47, who was put to death earlier this month for a 1999 murder. While on death row, Ocha fired his lawyer and tried to change his legal name to Raven Raven. Of the last 12 criminals executed in Florida, eight were volunteers.
Time and again, volunteers have jump-started dormant death houses. Gary Gilmore, whose 1977 execution rang in the modern capital-punishment era, was a volunteer. So was Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the first federal prisoner executed since 1963. Death-row inmates often recognize what's at stake. In Ohio in 1997, rioting death-row inmates attempted to kill Wilford Lee Berry Jr., who was trying to become the first Ohioan executed in more than 30 years. Berry survived the beating and was put to death in 1999. Since then, 15 other Ohio inmates have been executed.
It is unclear whether Ross's execution would have that quickening effect. The last New England execution took place in 1960. A recent Quinnipiac University poll showed that although 70% of Connecticut respondents want Ross executed, in general just 37% favor the death penalty over life without parole. Being the exception may be part of Ross's motivation. "Michael relishes the idea of being the only one," says Robert Nave, who, as head of the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty, has visited Ross frequently. "I think he knows he'll go down in history as the first--and perhaps the last-- guy executed in modern New England."