Home Christian News High Court Ruling for Texas Inmate Praised

High Court Ruling for Texas Inmate Praised

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice said in a written statement Thursday, “We respect the court’s decision and will be making appropriate modifications to our practices to align with today’s ruling.”

The ERLC joined in a friend-of-the-court brief for the Supreme Court with the Christian Legal Society and six other faith or religious freedom organizations in support of Ramirez’s free exercise of religion.

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Ramirez, 37, was scheduled to receive the death penalty Sept. 8, but the Supreme Court granted a stay of the execution that night and heard oral arguments about the case in November. He filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court after a federal judge and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals both refused to stay the execution.

Moore said he believes Ramirez came to know the Lord in prison in “a genuine way” and underwent a change. He has ministered to Ramirez since 2016, when the prisoner was accepted as a member of Second Baptist Church. In 2008, Ramirez was convicted of the murder of convenience store clerk Pablo Castro, whom he stabbed 29 times during a robbery.

Texas failed to satisfy the requirements of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), Roberts said in the majority opinion. RLUIPA, a federal law enacted in 2000, prohibits the government from substantially burdening the free exercise of religion by a prisoner or, in land-use cases, by a person or institution. The government, however, can gain an exemption from the law if it can show it has a compelling interest and is using the “least restrictive means” to further that interest.

Texas “has not shown that it is likely to carry that burden,” Roberts wrote. “Ramirez is likely to succeed on his RLUIPA claims because Texas’s restrictions on religious touch and audible prayer in the execution chamber burden religious exercise and are not the least restrictive means of furthering the State’s compelling interests.”

When it approved RLUIPA, Congress decided “prisoners like Ramirez have a strong interest in avoiding substantial burdens on their religious exercise, even while confined,” according to the chief justice’s opinion. “Ramirez is likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of injunctive relief because he will be unable to engage in protected religious exercise in the final moments of his life.”

A specific injunction like the one Ramirez “seeks – rather than a stay of execution – will be the proper form of equitable relief when a prisoner raises a RLUIPA claim in the execution context,” Roberts wrote.

In his dissent in Ramirez v. Collier, Thomas said the “only relevant evidence … cuts strongly in favor of finding that Ramirez is insincere” in his belief that having Moore lay hands on him is part of his faith. Also, Ramirez failed to exhaust the administrative remedies available to him, Thomas said.

Ramirez said in his application to the Supreme Court he believes Moore’s “laying on of hands on him as he dies, and the vocalization of prayers and Scripture, will assist his passing from life to death and will guide his path to the afterlife.”

Second Baptist Church in Corpus Christi is affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas, one of two Baptist conventions in the state, and the SBC, Moore said.