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25-Year-Old Gets Death Sentence For Murder Of Parents

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By MICHAEL A. SCARCELLA, Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: November 17, 2007

BRADENTON - The lives of Richard and Kathleen Ross were taken in the middle of the night, their heads crushed with a baseball bat gripped in the hands of the son whom they loved.

Blaine Daniel Ross, a troubled youth, unemployed and drifting in life, slipped ropes around the necks of his parents. He scattered clothing to stage a burglary, a move that did not fool anyone.

Despite the brutality of the January 2004 murders, and the clumsy effort to conceal his crime, his other relatives stood by him. They did not want him to die. Ross' life, his family and his attorneys said, was worth saving.

But now Ross, 25, will join the ranks of Florida's death row inmates, nearly 400 killers awaiting execution by lethal injection. Ross was sentenced to death Friday.

In balancing aggravating factors with those that portray Ross as a sympathetic person, "the scales of life and death tilt unquestionably to the side of death," Circuit Judge Edward Nicholas said in court.

Ross showed no emotion, seeming prepared for the words that followed.

"Accordingly, Blaine Ross, you have not only forfeited your right to live among us, but under the laws of the state of Florida you have forfeited your right to live at all," said Nicholas, who presided over the Ross trial earlier this year.

The death sentence, which court observers said was largely anticipated, was the first in Manatee County in nearly two decades.

Ross, his lawyers said, should have been sentenced to life in prison without parole, punishment that critics of the death penalty say is worse than death.

As their defense, Ross' lawyers said Manatee County sheriff's detectives coerced a confession and that someone else may have been responsible for the murders at the Ross home in the Lionshead subdivision. But jurors did not buy the defense. The state had the confession, blood evidence on Ross' pants and a motive.

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