The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in favor of a Texas death row inmate’s request to have his spiritual adviser lay hands on him and audibly pray while he is executed.
The 8-1 ruling handed a victory to inmate John Ramirez, who was sentenced to death for a brutal 2004 murder, and who claimed Texas was poised to execute him in a manner that would violate his religious rights.
Justice Clarence Thomas issued a solo dissent, saying Ramirez’s lawsuit sought “‘to manipulate the judicial process’ to win further delay.”
The dispute pitted the religious rights of death row inmates in their final living moments against the interest of prison officials in carrying out executions efficiently and with minimal risk of interference.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said Texas’s “categorical ban” on religious touch went too far and would render Ramirez “unable to engage in protected religious exercise in the final moments of his life.”
The case arose when Ramirez brought a religious liberty challenge after Texas refused to permit his spiritual adviser, Dana Moore, to lay hands on him and audibly pray while he is executed, with Ramirez appealing to the Supreme Court after losing in lower courts.
Under a 2000 statute known as the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, or RLUIPA, prison officials are barred from seriously burdening an inmate’s religious rights unless they can meet a strict legal standard.
Ramirez argued that Texas failed to clear this high legal bar both because it lacks an adequate legal justification for prohibiting the laying of hands and audible prayer, and that its blanket ban is far too sweeping.
Texas contended that permitting Ramirez’s pastor to lay hands on him and pray aloud inside the execution chamber would create an unacceptable risk given the potential harm at stake.
But the majority ultimately rejected Texas’s argument.
“We do not see how letting the spiritual advisor stand slightly closer, reach out his arm, and touch a part of the prisoner’s body well away from the site of any IV line would meaningfully increase risk,” Roberts wrote. “And that is all Ramirez requests here.”