Should Michael Ross Die?

Like many other people I'm opposed to the death penalty. I have no reservations about it; I believe it's wrong in all circumstances. But that doesn't mean it's always easy to argue the case against it; nor does it mean there's no rational case to be argued in its favour.

There are instances in which it is relatively easy to decide. A woman kills her abusive husband, who has assaulted her repeatedly over a period of ten years, and who has convinced her that if she tries to leave him he will find her and kill her. Who could reasonably insist that this woman should be executed?

But then, sometimes, you come across a serious test case, a really tough one. Michael Bruce Ross is scheduled to be executed in Connecticut on 26 January 2005. If the execution is carried out, it will be the first in the state since 1960. We're not talking here of assembly-line judicial killing such as we find in Texas; this is the liberal Atlantic seaboard. Even so, Governor Jodi Rell has refused to grant him a reprieve.

Two facts interfere with Ross's eligibility for reprieve - and make him a difficult case to call upon in support of the anti-death-penalty argument. The first is the nature of his crime: he raped and strangled eight young women between the ages of 14 and 25. Even in a world of more or less casual mass killing by state military machines and freelance terrorists, these are inexorably terrible acts. There are psychiatric reports in Ross's case; unsurprisingly, he has been found to be not mentally or emotionally 'normal' - what else can we expect of a man who did these things? Nonetheless it is very tempting to set all his supposed psychiatric problems aside and conclude that a man who subjected eight women to extreme terror and agonising death, denying them all possibility of fulfilment and happiness and bringing to their families anger and grief almost beyond assuaging, does not deserve to live.

Nevertheless I don't believe he should be executed. By all the suffering he has caused, Michael Ross has taken upon himself a duty that he should not be allowed to escape: the duty to go on living. He must be made to confront the enormity of what he has done, and work towards atonement. At the same time he should work towards achieving, even for a short portion of his life, a purpose other than destruction, exemplifying a philosophy of punishment found in many societies but notably in revolutionary ones: that felons should expiate their crimes through productive work. There is nothing soft about any of this, no misguided liberal agonising over the perpetrator rather than the victim. There is a real sense in which the perpetrator's life would - and should - still be forfeit.

The second awkward fact is that in American death-row terminology he is a 'volunteer' - he has opted out of the appeals process and asked to be executed. Where does that leave the abolitionists? All other things considered, if he wants to die, let him die. But the decision by a death row detainee to volunteer for execution is one that is always hedged about with psychological and moral pitfalls. It may be the outcome of despair after protracted appeals and repeated temporary stays of execution. It may be taken in order to assert that there is still one narrow field in which the prisoner retains control of his or her own life. In a few cases there may be a desire on the prisoner's part for notoriety. Whatever the motives, we have to remember that the prisoner's decision is taken within the context of incarceration. That is, within the particular 'universe' of death row, which functions in very particular ways with structures, relationships and values unlike those of a normal community. More specifically, within the context of a loss of real decision-making initiative, in a situation in which virtually everything is out of the prisoner's hands, so that a decision to die can be felt as a final assertion of personal autonomy. The prisoner's supposed decision to die can never be taken as consensual. His 'voluntary' death cannot be seen as 'state-assisted suicide'; a much more apposite phrase would be 'prisoner-assisted homicide'.

Faced with this tough one, it's harder to argue on personal grounds, as you can in the instance of the woman who kills her violent husband. To some extent you have to shift your ground and argue from general principles: it's wrong, for example, to execute Michael Ross because an execution is an unresolvable paradox: a murder committed in order to deter murder.

This argument, incidentally, would be harder to sustain if capital punishment did in fact succeed in deterring murder. But there has never been convincing evidence that it does. To cite only one example - a very striking one - the murder rate in death-penalty states of the US is currently 65% higher than in non-death-penalty states. This differential has been widening over the past decade. So it's wrong to execute Michael Ross because his death will do nothing to prevent future killings.

The general arguments, as always, do carry some weight. But even in such a case you can deal also with the particular - even with this individual who arouses no sympathy but only revulsion. The penal system can and must enact the imperatives he has brought upon himself. He must be made to understand that by taking life he has set himself a series of demanding and inescapable tasks.