Texas District Attorney Calls Death Penalty ​“Unethical,” Tries to Withdraw Execution Notice for John Ramirez

Days after his office asked to set an exe­cu­tion date for Texas death row pris­on­er John Ramirez, Nueces County District Attorney Mark Gonzalez (pic­tured) asked Ramirez’s tri­al court to with­draw the order. 

Gonzalez, a for­mer defense attor­ney who was elect­ed in 2016 on a plat­form of crim­i­nal jus­tice reform, said he has come to view the death penal­ty as ​“uneth­i­cal” and that the request for an exe­cu­tion date was the result of a mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion with­in his office. 

“The under­signed District Attorney for Nueces County has the firm belief that the death penal­ty is uneth­i­cal and should not be imposed on Mr. Ramirez or any oth­er per­son while the under­signed occu­pies the office in ques­tion,” Gonzalez wrote in the April 14, 2022 motion to with­draw the order set­ting the exe­cu­tion. ​“The Assistant District Attorney who most recent­ly moved for an exe­cu­tion date in this cause was not aware of my desire in this mat­ter and did not con­sult me pri­or to mov­ing for an execution date.” 

Upon receiv­ing the Nueces County District Attorney’s request for an exe­cu­tion date in ear­ly April, 94^th Judicial District Court Judge Bobby Galvan set Ramirez’s exe­cu­tion for October 5, 2022. Judge Galvan must approve Gonzalez’s request for Ramirez’s exe­cu­tion to be called off.

Gonzalez said he has become more opposed to the death penal­ty since he was elect­ed in 2016. He was one of 56 elect­ed pros­e­cu­tors to sign a let­ter in February 2022 urg­ing sys­temic changes to end the death penalty nationwide.

“I’ve been open about not want­i­ng to seek the death penal­ty, and I think it’d be hyp­o­crit­i­cal of me as a per­son not want­i­ng to seek the death penal­ty and then set­ting a date of exe­cu­tion for some­one, for it to be car­ried out,” Gonzalez told the Caller-Times. Gonzalez’s state­ments indi­cate that Ramirez would not receive a new exe­cu­tion date dur­ing his tenure as DA. His cur­rent term ends in 2024.

In a Facebook live video, Gonzalez apol­o­gized to any­one upset about the motion. The dis­trict attor­ney said his think­ing on the issue has changed over time and that he ​“did this because I thought this would be the right thing to do.”

Ramirez was sen­tenced to death in 2009 for the stab­bing death of Pablo Castro dur­ing a rob­bery. Fernando Castro, the youngest son of the vic­tim. told KRIS-TV that he was angry the October 5 exe­cu­tion would be canceled. 

In his Facebook Live video, Gonzalez urged con­stituents to con­sid­er the pros and cons of the death penal­ty, stress­ing the dis­pro­por­tion­ate impact cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has on peo­ple of col­or, peo­ple from low-income back­grounds, and peo­ple with intellectual disabilities. 

“I know that I’m doing this on a case where I don’t think inno­cence is a ques­tion,” Gonzalez told the Caller-Times. ​“DAs still have oppor­tu­ni­ties to do what they feel is right. … I’m always going to do what I think is right, even if I get backlash.”

The U.S. Supreme Court pre­vi­ous­ly stayed Ramirez’s exe­cu­tion to con­sid­er his chal­lenge to Texas’ refusal to allow his pas­tor to ​“lay hands” on him and ​“pray over” him out loud dur­ing his exe­cu­tion. In an opin­ion issued March 24, 2022, the Court reversed low­er court orders that had denied his requests. The Court rec­og­nized that ​“there is a rich his­to­ry of cler­i­cal prayer at the time of a prisoner’s exe­cu­tion, dat­ing back well before the found­ing of our Nation.” In reach­ing its deci­sion, the Court not­ed that Texas also had, until recent­ly, per­mit­ted its chap­lains to engage in audi­ble prayer and phys­i­cal­ly touch con­demned pris­on­ers in the exe­cu­tion cham­ber. The fed­er­al Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act bars states from sub­stan­tial­ly bur­den­ing a prisoner’s exer­cise of reli­gion unless doing so is the least restric­tive means of fur­ther­ing a com­pelling gov­ern­men­tal inter­est. In an 8 – 1 deci­sion, the Court held that Texas’ blan­ket ban on audi­ble prayer and touch­ing was not the least restric­tive method to pre­serve the safe­ty and solem­ni­ty of the execution chamber.