John Henry Ramirez does not want to die alone. The Texas prisoner knows that at his execution, scheduled for Wednesday evening, he will be able to see witnesses through a pane of glass. A stoic prison officer will probably be standing near his head. But Ramirez also wants his Baptist pastor to lay a hand on him as he dies.
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“It's part of my faith –- there's so much about the power of touch,” Ramirez told The Marshall Project during an interview last week. “You bless someone at the time of their most spiritual need.”
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice told Ramirez this was against the rules. Ramirez, who was convicted of stabbing to death a Corpus Christi convenience store worker named Pablo Castro during a robbery in 2004, sued, saying it violated the First Amendment's guarantee of religious freedom. The agency declined to comment for this story, citing the litigation, but has previously said in news reports and court filings that Ramirez's request could create a security risk.
The case is still winding through the court system. Whatever the outcome, Ramirez's lawsuit is the latest turn in a larger debate around the religious rights of men and women who face execution. It also highlights a notable fact about the American death penalty: Most aspects of executions, from last meals to last words to witness choices, are based on historical traditions and bureaucratic decisions — not legal rights.
“There are certain things states are constitutionally required to do,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “You can't execute someone in a manner that is cruel and unusual. But everything else is up [to the states] to decide.”
With nine executions scheduled through the rest of the year, we examined some legal and policy debates surrounding how they are carried out.
The Ramirez case didn't come out of nowhere. In 2010, Oklahoma prisoner Donald Wackerly asked state officials to let his Buddhist spiritual adviser go inside the execution chamber with him. The officials refused, and Wackerly sued. The officials prevailed in court, but did allow the adviser to access Wackerly's body after his death and perform Buddhist funeral rites.