Supreme Court Moves Arguments in Death Penalty Cases to Hear Texas Abortion Cases

The U.S. Supreme Court has pushed back argu­ments in three death-penal­ty cas­es so it can expe­dite con­sid­er­a­tion of two cas­es involv­ing Texas’ restric­tive abor­tion statute. To hear argu­ment in United States v. Texas and Whole Women’s Health v. Jackson on November 1, 2021, the court resched­uled argu­ment in Ramirez (John) v. Collier and Shinn v. Ramirez (David) and Jones. The Court will now hear argu­ment in Ramirez v. Collier on November 9, 2021, and in Shinn v. Ramirez and Jones on December 8, 2021.

In Ramirez v. Collier, the Court will review Texas death-row pris­on­er John Henry Ramirez​’s claim that the state’s refusal to allow his pas­tor to ​“lay hands” on him or pray audi­bly dur­ing his exe­cu­tion vio­lates the fed­er­al Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and his First Amendment right to the free exer­cise of reli­gion. The Court stayed Ramirez’s exe­cu­tion on the night of September 8, 2021, three hours after Ramirez had been sched­uled to be put to death. Ramirez had request­ed that his pas­tor be allowed to accom­pa­ny him into the exe­cu­tion cham­ber, lay hands on him to admin­is­ter reli­gious rites, and pray with him out loud. Texas, which had pre­vi­ous­ly per­mit­ted prison chap­lains to min­is­ter to con­demned pris­on­ers in the exe­cu­tion cham­ber, had said that Ramirez’s pas­tor could be admit­ted into the exe­cu­tion cham­ber but could nei­ther speak nor touch Ramirez once inside the chamber. 

RLIUPA pro­vides that ​“No gov­ern­ment shall impose a sub­stan­tial bur­den on the reli­gious exer­cise of a per­son resid­ing in or con­fined to an insti­tu­tion … unless the gov­ern­ment demon­strates that impo­si­tion of the bur­den on that per­son— (1) is in fur­ther­ance of a com­pelling gov­ern­men­tal inter­est; and (2) is the least restric­tive means of fur­ther­ing that com­pelling governmental interest.”

“So long as the death penal­ty is con­sti­tu­tion­al, states have a com­pelling inter­est in car­ry­ing the exe­cu­tions out,” Death Penalty Information Center exec­u­tive direc­tor Robert Dunham told The American Independent. ​“At some point, the right to exer­cise reli­gion is over­come by the states’ inter­est in car­ry­ing out the exe­cu­tion. The ques­tion that the Supreme Court has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to answer is, what’s that point?” 

In Shinn v. Ramirez and Jones, the Supreme Court will con­sid­er Arizona pros­e­cu­tors’ chal­lenge to fed­er­al appel­late court rul­ings that allowed death-row pris­on­ers to present the fed­er­al court with evi­dence of tri­al counsel’s inef­fec­tive­ness that their state post-con­vic­tion lawyers had failed to first present to the state courts. As a gen­er­al rule, fed­er­al habeas cor­pus law requires a state pris­on­er to present an issue to the state courts as a pre­con­di­tion to receiv­ing review of that claim in fed­er­al court. However, in a 7 – 2 deci­sion in 2012 in Martinez v. Ryan — anoth­er Arizona death penal­ty case — cre­at­ed a lim­it­ed excep­tion when a state pris­on­er is pro­vid­ed inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion both at tri­al and in state post-con­vic­tion pro­ceed­ings and, because of the post-con­vic­tion lawyer’s fail­ures, the pris­on­er was denied the chance to chal­lenge his or her tri­al counsel’s ineffectiveness. 

Arizona death-row pris­on­ers Barry Jones and David Ramirez both allege that the state pro­vid­ed them inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion through­out the tri­al and state post-con­vic­tion process. As a result, they assert, they were denied the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ade­quate­ly present crit­i­cal legal issues: Jones’ lawyers’ fail­ure to inves­ti­gate and present evi­dence of inno­cence and Ramirez’s lawyers’ fail­ure to inves­ti­gate and present evi­dence of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty and oth­er men­tal health prob­lems. Arizona argues that Jones and Ramirez may raise the issue of their tri­al counsel’s inef­fec­tive­ness but should be lim­it­ed to the evi­dence that was before the state court. Legal schol­ars argue that Arizona’s argu­ment would effec­tive­ly gut Martinez and reward states for pro­vid­ing sys­tem­i­cal­ly inadequate representation.

Ramirez v. Collier and Shinn v. Ramirez and Jones are two of three death-penal­ty argu­ments at the Court this term. The third, United States v. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was argued on October 13, 2021.