After the request of a death row inmate to obtain that his pastor can touch him during his passage from life to death, the Supreme Court of the United States suspended, this Wednesday evening, at the last minute his execution.

John Ramirez, 37, was due to receive a lethal injection in Huntsville Penitentiary in Texas, 17 years after stabbing a store worker in a robbery in the southern conservative state.

Towards a case law

A few months before the deadline, this Christian member of a Baptist church had taken the courts to demand that his pastor could put his hands on his body during the execution and pray aloud during his last moments. The latter "explained under oath that placing his hands on a dying person and vocalizing his prayers during the passage from life to death was an integral part of the rites he wishes to administer to John Ramirez as part of their common faith", his lawyers explained in court documents. However, according to them, the Texas rules "oblige him to stay in the corner of a room like a potted plant".

Texan prison authorities currently allow the presence of a spiritual advisor in the death chamber, but the latter must remain silent and at a distance for "security" reasons.

After suffering setbacks at first instance and on appeal, John Ramirez lodged an urgent appeal to the United States Supreme Court on Monday.

The high court agreed in extremis to suspend its execution and specified that it would study the merits of the case in October or November.

She did not justify her decision, as is customary for emergency procedures.

It should take the opportunity to clarify its case law on the religious freedoms of death row prisoners, a subject that has been regularly seized of in recent years.

No differences between religions

In 2018, she refused to block the execution of a Muslim detainee who demanded the presence of an imam by his side in the death chamber. Faced with public outcry, she had a few weeks later suspended the lethal injection of another convict who wanted to be accompanied by a Buddhist spiritual advisor in his last moments. Stressing that Christians were entitled to the support of a chaplain of their faith, she wrote that the prison authorities should not differentiate between religions.

Several states then excluded all spiritual advisers from the death chamber.

In 2021, however, the Supreme Court ruled that this radical solution infringed too much on the right to free religious exercise, guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, and suspended two executions on this ground.

The new file should allow him to say what limits to this principle are legitimate in the prison world and even more, during the passage from life to death.

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