Andy Thibault

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Cool Justice 
You Be The Executioner
By ANDY THIBAULT
Columnist
Law Tribune Newspapers
February 14, 2005

Now that Michael Ross has been assured immortality, maybe the Legislature will have the guts to abolish the death penalty. Big maybe.

For more than 20 years, taxpayer money has been wasted on Ross. Why is that? It is because in this particular case, no one wants to make a mistake. Emphasis on "this particular case."

The saying is that death penalty cases are final. Well, other cases also bring some finality with them.

What about other cases where mistakes are made? What about all the people falsely arrested? What about all the people in prison right now, wrongly convicted, either on the facts, because of defective lawyering, bad police work or lazy or incompetent judges?

I know of at least a few such cases. They involve cops planting drugs, cops ignoring additional viable suspects, mentally-deranged witnesses used to establish probable cause, defense lawyers barely going through the motions and judges clearly favoring one side over the other.

It doesn't really matter when mistakes are made in these cases. Courts are too busy to interrupt the flow, such as it is. Many victims of cops, lawyers, judges and the lazy, ineffective press don't have resources to overturn injustice or mitigate harm done to them. If it's such a big deal to kill the wrong person - or even the right person - why isn't it such a big deal to send the wrong person to jail for five, 15 or 20 years?

Why aren't lawyers and judges held accountable for their performances? Why do the citizenry, the Legislature and the governor tolerate the phony Statewide Grievance Committee and the biggest phony of all, the Judicial Review Council - these facades in which so many are able to pretend we are doing the right thing?

Justice is a crap shoot. Inevitably, some crap lands on those ensnared by the system and its players. Very little crap lands on the actual perpetrators of crap justice - the cops, the lawyers and the judges who mess up on the job.

I've been all over the map on the death penalty. The way the laws are written, I thought cop killer Terry Johnson, a certified marksman, was a good candidate. Johnson assassinated state trooper Russell Bagshaw.

Bagshaw's cruiser split apart in October 1990 as Johnson emptied eight rounds of Federal Hydra-Shok hollow point 9mm bullets from his automatic pistol. Bagshaw knew he was defenseless.

A jury decided the terror and torture of this assassination was sufficient for the death penalty under Connecticut law. The state Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision, decided Bagshaw did not suffer enough under the requirements of the law.

A second burst of gunfire - nine more bullets - entered Bagshaw's cruiser. One bullet that burst through the window entered an arm hole in Bagshaw's bullet-proof vest. It passed through his left lung and then his heart. Bagshaw remained conscious for at least 90 seconds and might have survived up to 15 minutes, long enough to cry out to his creator. He suffocated and drowned in his own blood.

We all know there is no equal justice when it comes to the death penalty.

We should all begin to admit there is no equal justice at all, then start doing something about it. Walk into any courthouse on any day. Do we really want to give these people, or any government agency, the power to kill?

Abolish the death penalty. Take all the money spent on Ross and use it to flesh out the truth about the all victims of the so-called justice system.

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