In the Matter of John Ramirez

I find myself unexpectedly engaged by the decision of the Supreme Court to stay the execution of John Ramirez, a convicted murderer who had been scheduled to be executed by the State of Texas last September 8.

First, the story itself is interesting. Ramirez was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death for having brutally murdered Pablo Castro, an employee in a convenience store, in the course of an armed robbery in which Ramirez managed to steal a mere $1.25 after stabbing Castro twenty-nine times in the alley behind his store. This was all some time ago—the murder took place in 2004—and in the meantime Ramirez has been on death row awaiting his execution. Suggestive, more than of anything else, of our national ambivalence towards the death penalty, we have created a strange world in which people sentenced to death are obliged to wait for years and years before they are actually executed as the inevitable appeals wind their almost interminable way through the courts and then, finally, the condemned person either is or isn’t granted his or her life through an act of clemency by a state’s governor personally or by a board empowered to make such a decision, or in federal cases by the President of the United States. Clemency doesn’t happen too often, however: other than in the case of blanket clemency offered by a state’s governor as an expression of distaste for the death penalty itself, there have been fewer than two prisoners a year spared execution since 1976. In contrast, more than 1,500 prisoners have been executed at the state or national level during those same years.

But the stay granted in the Ramirez case caught my interest because of the reason it was granted: the State of Texas had made it clear that Ramirez’ pastor was not going to be permitted to lay his hands on Ramirez’ head as part of the latter’s final prayer before being put to death and his lawyers argued, apparently convincingly enough for the Supreme Court to feel called to rule on the matter, that that refusal constituted an infringement of Ramirez’ civil rights. As a result, the issue before the Court transcends the details of Ramirez’ personal story and becomes one far more broad in its implications by raising the question of what precisely constitutes freedom of religion. And, even more to the point, it will require the Supreme Court to specify whether a state has the right unilaterally to decide what does and doesn’t constitute legitimate religious behavior on the part of a specific citizen or group of citizens, behavior that specifically cannot be curtailed by legislation or edict precisely because the exercise of the religion of one’s choice is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution as one of our most basic civil rights.

The question of whether the laying on of the pastor’s hands is or isn’t a legitimate Christian ritual is not for me to decide. But it seems even less reasonable than asking a rabbi to make such a decision would be asking a secular court or—even more absurdly—a state’s Department of Corrections—to do so. And yet that is precisely where things stand. The Texas Department of Corrections turned down the request because of what they referenced vaguely as “security issues,” but without explaining how the security of the execution chamber, let alone of the entire prison complex, could or would be endangered by a pastor placing his hands on someone’s head? More to the point, the Department’s argument was seriously undercut by a different minister, the Reverend Carroll Pickett, who served as a death row chaplain in Texas for fifteen years and who wrote in his book, Within These Walls: Memoirs of a Death House Chaplain, that both he and his successor both routinely had physical contact with condemned individuals in the last minutes of their lives and that there was never any sort of obvious risk to anyone at all in that gesture of spiritual kindness to a prisoner about to die. (Reverend Pickett’s book was quoted verbatim in the document submitted to the Supreme Court called “Brief of Former Prison Officials as Amici Curiae in Support of the Prisoner.” To read those remarks, click here and search for Pickett.)

But the legal wrangling began almost immediately nonetheless.

A judge of the Federal District Court in Houston rejected Ramirez’ argument that the decision to bar his pastor from placing his hands on his head violated his civil rights, accepting the argument that prison officials should be free to decide what does or doesn’t constitute a breach of prison security. Then a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld the District Court’s decision. And now the matter has come to the Supreme Court.

In my opinion, it would be a great error of judgment to wave all this away as just so much legal folderol because it seems beyond crazy to worry about—or to care about—the civil rights of someone whom the state is about to kill anyway. I see why someone might think that. But there’s a lot more here than the specific question of Inmate Ramirez’ right to engage in the rituals of his faith without needing to get anyone’s permission to do so.

Other cases like this have come up just recently. And the verdicts have been strangely inconsistent. In 2019, for example, the Supreme Court declined to stay the execution of a prisoner in Alabama who claimed that his civil rights had been violated when he was denied the right to have his own clergyperson, a Muslim imam, attend his execution, which right was routinely granted to Christians executed in Alabama. But then, just a few weeks later, the Court forbade the execution of a prisoner in Texas who wished his own spiritual advisor, a Buddhist priest, to be present at his execution, which right Texas at the time granted solely to Christians and Muslims. After winning in court, however, the State of Alabama decided to head off future legal troubles simply by excluding all spiritual advisors or clergypeople from the execution chamber. But then, earlier this year, the Supreme Court forbade Alabama from executing someone who had been denied the presence of a Christian minister in the execution chamber.

In the end, what is really under discussion here is the right of the federal government—or any government—to determine what constitutes a bona fide religious ritual. The security argument seems, at least to me, wholly bogus. (Are they really afraid that the pastor might strangle the prisoner if physical contact between them were to be permitted? That sounds even crazier than the idea that a phalanx of armed Corrections officers couldn’t overcome a single unarmed pastor no matter what he attempted to do during the few minutes before an execution.) Nor are we seriously discussing the question of whether prisoners should or shouldn’t be allowed to practice the religion of their choice, a basic civil right specifically not extinguished with incarceration. Instead, we are seeing a state government choosing, in my opinion arbitrarily, to determine that the laying on of the hands is not enough of a Christian ritual for the prisoner’s right to engage in it to be guaranteed by law. And that is why it is so important for the Supreme Court to strike down the rule that forbids contact between minister and prisoner. Not because John Ramirez does or doesn’t deserve the solace he expects to receive from the physical touch of his pastor’s hands—but because the government must never be permitted to arrogate to itself the right of deciding which religious rituals are included in the general freedom we all enjoy to practice our religions without the government mixing in negatively or positively.

Freedom of religion, like freedom of speech or the freedom to assemble, is one of the  foundation stones upon which our American republic rests. To allow that freedom to be eroded is never going to be a good thing for those who cherish the civil rights enshrined in the Constitution. Reverend Dana Moore, pastor of the Second Baptist Church in Corpus Christi, is John Ramirez’ minister. If he feels that his faith calls him to lay his hands on John Ramirez as the latter is being executed to offer him the kind of spiritual strength necessary to die with dignity, then that decision should be entirely his to make.