11 September 2021 :
U.S. Supreme Court Stays Texas Execution, Agrees to Review Contours of the Right to Religious Exercise in the Execution Chamber
In an after-hours order issued on September 8, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court halted Texas’s planned execution of John Henry Ramirez and agreed to review his claim that the state’s refusal to allow his pastor to “lay hands” on him or pray audibly during the execution violated federal law and his First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion.
The order, released shortly after 9:45 p.m. Eastern time — nearly three hours after Ramirez’s execution was scheduled to begin — directed the Court’s clerk “to establish a briefing schedule that will allow the case to be argued in October or November 2021.” It was the fourth time since 2019 that the Court has stayed an execution based on a dispute over the exercise of religion in the death chamber, but the first time it has scheduled any of those cases for full briefing and argument. The court has not granted stays of execution for any other reasons during that time period.
Ramirez’s request to permit his pastor to lay hands on him during the execution was the most extensive religious demand made to date by any condemned prisoner. However, Ramirez also requested that his pastor be permit to pray out loud with him during the execution process. Ramirez’s counsel asked the Court to review whether “the State’s decision to allow Ramirez’s pastor to enter the execution chamber, but forbidding the pastor from laying his hands on his parishioner as he dies … and from singing prayers, saying prayers or scripture, or whispering prayers or scripture” violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (“RLUIPA”).
