The judge had stacked the rules against him from the get-go so it was inevitable in my mind that he'd get convicted of something, if not the whole bag. If my back was against the wall like this and knew how things were going, I'd definitely take a chance and hop on the stand to defend myself. Can't do any worse at that point.
What do you mean by the judge stacking the deck against him? I only marginally followed the court case, it was obvious he was guilty so there was no need to follow it closely. Are you referring to the judge disallowing his "expert" witnesses, or was there other conduct?
Yeah, pretty much things like that. Normally, the judge curbs what the prosecution can bring to the table as some of it could be irrelevant to the particular charges against the defendant yet allows some leeway for the defense to make a better case for someone who's freedom is on the line, especially here when he's facing 20 yrs to life when he's sentenced on May 30th. I don't have a timeline of what was allowed or not but numerous times the judge blocked evidence and testimony that would've helped Ross' cause so undoubtedly there'll be an appeal filed because of how one-sided things were for the defense. Imagine how vulnerable one would feel seeing how the tables were being stacked against you turning this ultimately into a kangaroo court.
My understanding is his "expert witnesses" were disallowed because they didn't have credentials that would establish them as experts. I myself don't find this a compelling reason. It's your defense, if you want to put every Tom, Dick, and Harry you can find on the stand as your experts, you should be allowed to. It would be easy for the prosecution to discredit them if they didn't have the credentials anyway. So I don't see the justice in prejudging who can testify. I agree with you completely on this point.