Thomas W. Ross
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thomas Warren Ross, Sr. is the president of Davidson College. After having served as executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation in Winston-Salem since 2001, Ross took over leadership of the private North Carolina liberal arts college on August 1, 2007.
Ross graduated from Davidson in 1972, as did his father in 1937 and his children in 1999 and 2001. Ross became an attorney, chief of staff to Congressman Robin Britt, a state superior court judge for 17 years, and director of the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts before joining the Reynolds Foundation.
Ross is the recipient of the William Rehnquist Award for Judicial Excellence, the Boy Scouts of America Distinguished Eagle Scout Award, Governing Magazine's National Public Official of the Year award (one of ten, 1994), and the Order of the Long Leaf Pine. [1]
Ross is widely known for his controversial sentence of a non-violent offender to 160 years in prison. In 1989, Derek Twyman (a Canadian citizen living in North Carolina) was given four consecutive 40-year sentences on four convictions for minor property crimes, totalling 160 years in person. An international movement has since developed to free Twyman, and has said that the sentence given by Ross constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment", contrary to the 8th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.[2][3]
