Michael Passaro was executed by the State of South Carolina for the murder of his two year old daughter Maggie Passaro
According to court documents Michael Passaro was in a custody battle with his wife when he would douse his car with gasoline and set it on fire with his two year old daughter Maggie Passaro in her car seat
Michael Passaro would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Michael Passaro would be executed by lethal injection on September 13 2002
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Michael Passaro FAQ
When Was Michael Passaro Executed
Michael Passaro was executed on September 13 2002
Michael Passaro Case
A South Carolina death row prisoner is scheduled to be executed tonight — and he can’t wait. Michael Passaro wants to be with the 2-year-old daughter he killed four years ago, the crime that landed him on death row. At around 6 p.m., to the dismay of his attorney and death penalty opponents, he will receive his wish through 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. Passaro pleaded guilty to murder in 2000 and requested — and received — the death penalty. Passaro has not, and never wanted to, appeal his guilty plea, and has rejected his attorneys’ attempts to help him. In July, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled unanimously that he was competent to waive all his appeals options, clearing the way for his execution tonight.
An ‘Escape’ From Punishment
This has left Joe Savitz, Passaro’s appellate lawyer, frustrated. He wants to help Passaro, and is ready to file appeal papers at any time to stop his execution. However, Passaro won’t let him. “I could stop it [the scheduled execution] right now if he let me,” Savitz said. “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] and am confident the execution will go forward. “It’s extremely frustrating as an attorney,” Savitz continued. “I think he should fight it, personally. His family thinks he should fight. This is not what I was trained to do.”
Passaro’s desire to die, Savitz said, is rooted in his longtime depression over the death of his first wife, who was killed 10 years ago when a car struck her while she was trying to help an accident victim. Passaro remarried and had his daughter Maggie with his second wife, Karen. However, the second marriage failed, and Karen Passaro asked for a divorce and filed a restraining order against him. Passaro reportedly only got to see his daughter one weekend a month, and Savitz says, Passaro feared his estranged wife would move, trying to take the girl away from him.
When Passaro lit his van and daughter on fire, he made sure he was parked in front of his wife’s condominium. He admitted that he wanted to kill himself and their daughter to get back at his second wife. In a suicide note recovered by investigators, Passaro wrote, “Whatever anyone does, please make sure that Karen doesn’t kill herself over this. I want her to live in pain for the rest of her life.”
The state of South Carolina is not really punishing Passaro with the execution, Savitz says; it’s giving him exactly what he wants. “He does not see the death sentence as punishment. He sees it as an escape from punishment,” Savitz said. “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.”
Vengeance for Vengeance
A lack of remorse is one reason why prosecutors have no doubts about their decision to send Passaro to his death. His vindictiveness towards his second wife and willingness to kill his own daughter in revenge make him deserving of the death penalty.
“This is a man filled with spite, hatred and evil,” said prosecutor Greg Hembree, after the state Supreme Court ruling in July. “It’s always hard to decide to send someone to death, but this was one of the easier decisions I’ve ever made.” Despite the slaying and Passaro’s determination to die, a psychiatrist ruled that he was mentally competent to waive his appeals. Still, death penalty opponents cannot understand how officials can execute someone who showed clear signs of suicidal tendencies and mental illness. “This is a unique case. Passaro was attempting suicide at the time of his crime,” said Bruce Pearson, spokesman for the South Carolina Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. “He appeared to suffer from severe mental depression with his desire to end his life and the life of his child. He’s not exactly the paradigm of rational thinking.”
Michael Passaro, Pearson said, seems to be a living example of why the death penalty does not work and another reason why he and death penalty opponents are fighting for a moratorium in South Carolina. “Cases where prisoners seem to be using the state indirectly to commit suicide seem to me to nullify any value of the death penalty and [shows] it is not good social policy,” Pearson said.
Volunteer Executions: The Way of the Future?
Still, Passaro’s case is not the first volunteer execution Savitz says he has encountered. Since the electric chair has been phased out in most executions as cruel and unusual punishment and lethal injection has become more common, he believes more prisoners will opt to die in the most humane way possible rather than spend the rest of their lives in prison appealing the sentences.
Cases like Passaro’s are rare, he said, but could become more common. “You never see anyone volunteering for the electric chair,” said Savitz. “But with lethal injection, it’s a painless way to go … you go to sleep. Prisoners see it as a way out rather than spending the rest of their lives in prison. It could be the way of the future.”
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/volunteer_execution020913.html
