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his mistrust. I understood this vulnerability, but I also didn’t want to be manipulated by him.
    Most of our telephone conversations began with his current legalissues and what happened at his first trial, but after a while I’d steer him in other directions. “If this were a perfect world, what would happen to you?” I thought he’d say he would want to be released. Instead he said he thought he should be at Whiting, the state hospital for the criminally insane, for the rest of his life. “I can never be set free, but I should be in a mental hospital setting rather than a prison setting.”
    I had never thought of a place like Whiting as better than a prison, because institutions for the criminally insane are often fraught with problems. “Why do you want to go to Whiting? Is it because you think that you’d get therapy?”
    â€œWell, actually, I don’t even need that.” I rolled my eyes at the suggestion that he didn’t need therapy, that his medication, Depo Lupron, was all he needed. He said it stopped the violent sexual fantasies that had caused his criminal behavior. “The thing is that I don’t think I should be locked up in a prison and treated like a criminal when I had no control over what I did. I am dangerous and can never be released, but I should be locked up in an institution.” Michael explained that the staff at the mental health units understood he was ill and didn’t treat him like a killer. However, he felt the staff at Northern, the maximum security prison where he was incarcerated, was cold and unsympathetic. “In here I’m the biggest piece of shit there is. You know? And I get guards coming by all the time, just making little comments.” He said that none of the guards believed he was mentally ill. A few months after he had been put on death row, he had been stabbed by a prisoner with a makeshift knife, but that physical attack didn’t bother him as much as the judgmental snipes of the guards. “They treat me like I woke up in the morning and went out and raped and killed because I didn’t have anything better to do.” In Whiting, he said he would be just another sick man who had committed a crime.
    Invariably our telephone conversations would cover his offer toforgo another trial. It didn’t make sense to me that he didn’t want to fight for his life under almost any circumstances. “I don’t think I’d fight even [if I thought I would win] because beating the death penalty is not what I care about,” he tried to explain. “I already lost. My issue is that my mental illness drove me to do what I did. That’s not the issue I’m going to court for now. The issue I’m going to court for now is whether I’m going to live or die.”
    â€œBut that is partially the function of—”
    â€œNo it’s not—” he interrupted, apparently knowing what I was going to say.
    â€œâ€”whether or not your mental illness caused you to do what you did.”
    â€œNo, because I’m going to be locked in a prison for the rest of my life. I’ll be Michael Ross, that scumbag who should have gotten the death sentence but got life through a loophole.”
    His explanation made me even more confused. “What’s the difference? If you got life, they’d be saying, in effect, we recognize you didn’t have control because you were mentally ill.”
    â€œIt ain’t worth fighting for that.”
    â€œI don’t understand the difference between being found mentally ill in the trial and the penalty phase.”
    â€œBecause I’m not winning anything.”
    â€œYou’re winning your life!”
    â€œBut that’s not important to me. You know, I really don’t care about that.” It was shocking that when he spoke about whether he would be executed, he seemed to be devoid of affect. “That’s never been an