Inmate Executed by Request
Sept. 13 -- A South Carolina prisoner had his death wish granted tonight — he was executed at his own request after repeatedly refusing help from his attorney.
Michael Passaro, 40, said he wanted to be with the 2-year-old daughter he killed four years ago, the crime that landed him on death row.
At 6:15 p.m. at the Broad River Correctional Center in Columbia — despite pleas from his attorney and death-penalty opponents who called his execution wish a "state-assisted suicide" — Passaro had his wish realized. He was executed by lethal injection for burning his daughter to death in his own aborted suicide attempt in 1998.
In November of that year, Passaro doused his van with gasoline, strapped his daughter Maggie inside and then sat down in his car before setting it ablaze. However, before the fire could consume him, Passaro jumped out of the car, leaving Maggie to die.
State-Assisted Escape From Punishment?
Passaro pleaded guilty to murder in 2000 and requested — and received — the death penalty. He did not, and never wanted to, appeal his guilty plea, frustrating the appellate attorney who wanted to help him. Joe Savitz was ready to file appeals papers to halt the execution at any time, but Passaro would not let him.
"I could stop it [the scheduled execution] right now if he let me," Savitz said before the execution. "I'm ready to file the appeals right now and stop it, but I have to have his consent to do that. But I don't think he will [give his consent] … It's extremely frustrating as an attorney."
Savitz said Passaro's desire to die may have been rooted in his longtime depression over the death of his first wife 10 years ago. But he also argued that Passaro saw an execution as an escape from true punishment.
"He does not see the death sentence as punishment. He sees it as an escape from punishment," Savitz said before Passaro's death. "He believes that he will be reunited with his first wife and the child that he killed, Maggie. He wants to die and has gotten the state to help him carry it out in what is essentially a state-assisted suicide. He is not doing this because he feels a sense of remorse."
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