HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) – New England’s first execution in 45 years Friday has some opponents worried that the death penalty will gain wider acceptance in the traditionally liberal region, but many national advocates and experts say they don’t expect a spate of executions.

“I doubt people will see this as an affirmation of embracing the death penalty in New England,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes the death penalty. “It will be slow to execute people in the region as it has in the past 40 years.”

National experts say the execution of serial killer Michael Ross stemmed more from the special circumstances of the case, including his decision to forgo appeals, rather than a sudden movement toward more executions in New England.

“If you don’t have volunteers, you don’t have many executions in these cases. There is not a lot of enthusiasm for it,” said David Baldus, a University of Iowa Law School professor who has studied the death penalty.

Death penalty defenders say the support already exists, but they do not expect its wide use in the region.

“Executions in more liberal states are not blocked by public opinion,” said John C. McAdams, a Marquette University political scientist and a death penalty supporter.

Yet the Ross case has brought home the reality that Connecticut is now a state where prisoners are executed.

“My fear is this will leave a psychic imprint on the state of Connecticut in many different ways,” said Robert Nave, executive director of the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty. “It’s teaching our children that the state can function as executioner, which I think is frightening.”

Ross, who killed eight women and raped most of them, was a popular candidate for execution. A University of Connecticut poll in January showed that 81 percent of state residents supported his execution, while 58 percent of residents favor the death penalty in general.

With Ross dead, Connecticut has six men on death row. It’s unclear who will face the next execution or when.

Some lawyers who have followed the cases say they involve complicated issues that could drag on for years. One death row inmate recently decided to forgo his appeals, but then changed his mind, and some of the cases could be affected by a state Supreme Court ruling ordering hearings to determine if there is racial and geographic discrimination in the use of the death penalty in Connecticut.

New England was the center of the death penalty reform movement in the 1800s, as states began eliminating capital punishment for crimes such as burglary and robbery, said UCLA law professor Stuart Banner, a death penalty historian. He said he doesn’t expect New England’s reputation to change with just one execution.

“It’s still a relatively liberal part of the country on the death penalty and other issues. That’s not going to change,” he said.

New Hampshire has no one on death row and has not executed anyone since 1939.

In Vermont, the first death penalty case in nearly 50 years began this month, but that is a federal case. Social activists were quick to protest the trial and vowed to organize against the death penalty.

In Massachusetts, where there is no death penalty, Gov. Mitt Romney is pitching a bill that would allow capital punishment for people convicted of terrorism, multiple murders, killing law enforcement officers and murder involving torture. The bill would require conclusive scientific evidence, such as DNA, linking the suspect to the crime.

Maine has not had the death penalty since 1887. In a state where a high percentage of murders are crimes of domestic violence, state Sen. Jonathan Courtney proposed a bill last month to impose capital punishment on people who kill family members.

To opponents, the region was forever changed in the eyes of the world when Ross was put to death by lethal injection.

“We stand apart from the rest of this nation in being more enlightened when it comes to civility and good public policy,” Nave said. “To lose that status is really quite disturbing.”

But McAdams said predictions by death penalty opponents that Connecticut was becoming like Texas was “an appeal to cultural prejudices.”

“Connecticut will not sink into the North Atlantic,” McAdams said. “Nothing much terrible will happen to Connecticut.”

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Associated Press Writer Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report.

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