By CAROL ZIMMERMANN
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court's consider- ation of spiritual advisers praying aloud with death- row inmates or placing hands on them in prayer during executions faced an uphill battle Nov. 9 as some of the justices questioned if this would open up other requests or could impose a safety risk. "This suggests we can look forward to an unending stream of variations," said Justice Samuel Alito, noting that last-minute pleas for stays of execution already come to the court frequently and that if the court granted this request, it could open the floodgates for others. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, along that same line, noted that if one state allows a cer- tain action in the execution chamber, wouldn't inmates in other states request the same treatment? Kavanaugh also indicated during the nearly two hours of arguments that the state had a compelling interest in providing the least possible risk in the execution cham- ber, but Justice Amy Coney Barrett questioned whether there could ever be a situa- tion completely without any risk in a prison. The case before the court involved John Ramirez, 37, who was sentenced to death for the murder of a conve- nience store clerk in 2004. He had asked that his Southern Baptist pastor be able to lay hands on him and pray aloud with him dur- ing his execution. When the Texas prison system rejected this, Ramirez challenged it in court, saying the state was violating his religious beliefs. The lower courts sided with the state, saying the prison system has a compel- ling interest to keep execu- tions safe and orderly. Just hours before his scheduled execution in early September of this year, the Supreme Court stopped it and agreed to hear his case. A specific law at issue in this case is the Religious Land Use and Institutional- ized Persons Act, or RLUIPA, passed by Congress in 2000. The law forbids prisons from imposing a "substan- tial burden" on an inmate's faith, unless that burden is "in furtherance of a compel- ling governmental interest" and the prison uses "the least restrictive means of further- ing that compelling govern- mental interest." Justice Sonia Sotomayor reminded the attorneys ar- guing against the inmate's request that "prisons have to work in good faith to accom- modate" prisoners' spiritual needs. Chief Justice John Roberts more than once asked the hy- pothetical question of what if an inmate said he wanted to covert to another faith prior to execution and the process would take three months, what would the prison sys- tem do then? Several spiritual advisers from different faith tradi- tions joined an amicus brief in the Ramirez case filed by the American Civil Liber- ties Union. The brief cited two women religious and a priest, along with a Muslim, Buddhist and Unitarian Uni- versalist. Sister Helen Prejean, a Sister of St. Joseph of Me- daille, who is a longtime op- ponent of the death penalty, is part of this brief, joined by Sister Barbara Battista, a Sister of Providence of St. Mary of the Woods in Indi- ana, and Benedictine Father Mark O'Keefe. These faith leaders said their presence during execu- tions is "critical to respecting the dignity and religious free- dom rights of the prisoner" and that prohibiting them from praying aloud or plac- ing hands on a prisoner "is not necessary from a security standpoint." The brief notes that spiri- tual advisers saw their role as "not simply to stand by mutely, but to minister to the prisoner as he meets death, providing spiritual comfort and a final opportunity for the individual to engage with his faith at the most critical time." The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops filed an am- icus brief in this case joined by the Texas Catholic Con- ference that said the role of spiritual advisers to prison- ers "is of particularly grave importance at the moment of death." Such guidance, the brief said, is "constitutionally pro- tected from government in- terference." The bishops said for the state to allow Ramirez spiri- tual assistance does not "ren- der his execution a just act" or essentially give a blessing to it, adding that the state "should act with justice by sparing Ramirez's life. If it will not, it should allow him to seek the mercy of God at the moment of his death." Prior to the arguments, John Meiser, supervising at- torney of Notre Dame Law School's Religious Liberty Clinic, said it is "difficult to see in Texas' newest policy anything other than callous- ness toward those it has con- demned to die."
THE RECORD NOVEMBER 11, 2021 NATION WWW.THERECORDNEWSPAPER.ORG 3
Court considers religious liberty in execution chamber
The state 'should act with justice by sparing Ramirez's life. If it will not, it should allow him to seek the mercy of God at the moment of his death.'
Amicus brief of the U.S. bishops
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