Texas plans to execute Ramiro Gonzales

In 2006, Ramiro Gonzales was sentenced to death in Texas for kidnapping, raping and murdering Bridget Townsend when they were both 18 years old.

There was evidence that Gonzales did not represent the “worst of the worst” type of criminal for which the death penalty would be reserved. Like many on death row, he suffered horrific abuse and neglect as a child. He turned to drugs and alcohol as a teenager to cope; he killed Townsend, his drug dealer’s girlfriend, while trying to steal drugs. After being arrested for sexually assaulting another woman, Gonzales confessed to the murder. He had turned 18 two months before the murder, making him barely old enough to be legally eligible for a death sentence.

In Texas, jurors in death penalty cases are instructed to predict whether the suspect is likely to commit future acts of violence. A psychiatrist, Dr. Edward Gripon, played a crucial role in convincing jurors that Gonzales enjoyed sexual assault, was unlikely to stop and was a poor candidate for rehabilitation. Fifteen years later, Gripon visited Gonzales on death row and reassessed him. This led Gripon to revise his opinion, citing an earlier reliance on a debunked statistic and a witness statement that has since been retracted. In his second evaluation, Gripon wrote that “it is my opinion, on the balance of reasonable psychiatric probability, that he [Gonzales] poses no threat of future danger to society.”

It was the only time Gripon had ever issued a report changing his opinion in a death penalty case, the psychiatrist said. told the Marshall Project in 2022. Despite Gripon’s dramatic turnaround, Texas plans to execute 41-year-old Gonzales by lethal injection on Wednesday.

Gonzales has expressed deep remorse for his crime. “I know my apology cannot even bring you peace and healing, but I feel I should still tell you how sorry I am for all the pain and anguish you have suffered because of my actions,” he wrote in an apology. 2022 letter to the Townsend family, which was excerpted from a clemency petition filed by Gonzales’ attorneys earlier this month. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, that I took away what was so precious to you and I know there’s nothing I can do or say to make it better.”

Gonzales was born in 1982 to a 17-year-old girl who struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, according to the pardon petition. His mother drank and used drugs during her pregnancy, and at one point deliberately overdosed in a failed attempt to terminate the pregnancy. After his birth, his mother gave him up to her parents. He didn’t meet his father until he was 19, when they were both incarcerated in the county jail.

The rejection by Gonzales’ mother was “always present,” according to the clemency petition, which noted that she went on to marry and have two more children who she raised despite never acknowledging Gonzales as her son. His grandparents worked long hours and left him unattended. Gonzales was repeatedly sexually abused, including by a cousin, starting at the age of 6, the petition said.

Bandera, the town where Gonzales grew up, was “hell on earth,” a cousin, identified only as Jessica, said in a video filed in support of Gonzales’ pardon petition.

“There was a lot of sexual abuse in the family,” Jessica said. “That was something that isn’t really talked about to this day. And it was never talked about, it was never stopped, because that abuse passed on to the next generation, which was Ramiro and me.”

The first time Gonzales found care and affection from a family member was during grade school, when his uncle married a woman named Loretta. She “hugged him, praised him and showed him the love and affection he craved,” the clemency petition said. When Gonzales was 15, Loretta was killed in a car accident with a drunk driver. Devastated, Gonzales turned to cocaine and methamphetamine to self-medicate. He dropped out of school and began stealing and forging checks to pay for drugs.

Shortly after his 18th birthday, Gonzales tried to rob his dealer’s house. Townsend was inside, and when she tried to call her boyfriend, Gonzales attacked and killed her.

Gripon testified during the trial that recidivism rates among people who commit sex crimes are as high as 80% — a statistic widely used at the time to justify extreme punishment. Years later, when a legal scholar tried to determine the source of the 80% claim, he discovered found it that it arose from an unsubstantiated claim in a 1986 Psychology Today article. Recent peer-reviewed studies have found that recidivism rates are below 20% after 25 years and that these rates are “significantly lower” among younger offenders, like Gonzales , Gripon noted in its second evaluation.

In court, Gripon also relied on written statements signed by Gonzales’ cellmate, Frederick Ozuna. The statements described Gonzales confessing to returning to the crime scene three or four times to have “body sex” and saying that “he would do it again” and “enjoyed it.”

During the trial, Ozuna attempted to invoke his right to remain silent and subsequently attempted to recant his statements. But the prosecutor continued to insist, until Ozuna agreed to answer affirmatively to a series of leading questions about the statements. Ozuna later recanted completely in an affidavit, describing how an officer threatened him with harsher punishment if he did not help defame Gonzales. “Ramiro never said those things to me,” Ozuna wrote in the statement, referring to the claims about attacking the victim’s dead body.

After Gonzales was convicted, he was appointed an attorney named Terry McDonald to represent him in state habeas proceedings, an opportunity to provide evidence of constitutional issues at trial. McDonald never met Gonzales, requested expert funding, interviewed family members and other witnesses or conducted evaluations of Gonzales, according to Gonzales’ current attorneys. Ultimately, McDonald filed a nine-page habeas petition (such documents are often hundreds of pages long), which the court dismissed as “frivolous.”

Gonzales was previously expected to be executed in 2022. Weeks before the planned murder, Gripon provided Gonzales’ attorneys with an appeal its revaluation report, admitting to relying on debunked information at trial and concluding that Gonzales posed no future danger. Two days before the execution, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted a stay focused The court will consider Gonzales’ claim that his death sentence was the result of false expert testimony.

Without holding a hearing or reviewing additional evidence, the court verbatim signed the state’s “findings of fact and conclusions of law” recommending that Gonzales be denied relief. (This is a common practice: a 2018 report published in the Houston Law Review found that judges adopted prosecutors’ findings in their entirety in 96% of the 191 cases the authors reviewed in Harris County, Texas.) The Court of Criminal Appeals adopted the trial court’s recommendation, and Gonzales was given a different execution date.

While awaiting trial, Gonzales had become a devout Christian.

“He said, ‘I can’t change the past, but I hope I can prove myself in the future,’” said Clinton Young, who served on death row in Texas with Gonzales before Young’s conviction was overturned due to a stunning revelation that the prosecutor in his case was also on the judge’s payroll. “He walked the walk.”

In 2021, Gonzales attempted to donate a kidney, an effort that was blocked by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which said:uncertain timeline‘of the donation could hinder his execution. “How can I give life back? This is probably the closest we can get to that goal,” Gonzales said told The Marshall Project in 2022.

Gonzales earned the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree from a Bible college and wrote sermons for the prison radio station. When the prison introduced “faith-based pods” in 2021, Gonzales became one of the program’s first peer coordinators. In an interview recorded for his clemency video, Gonzales described his work serving other people on “death watch” who also had an execution date in mind.

“The first thing we do to serve them is make sure they have clothing and food,” Gonzales said. “And then God comes next, like, ‘Hey man, I just want you to know I’m a Christian. I have a date. If you have doubts or if there are emotional problems right now because you are waiting for death, we can talk about it. Whether you have a date or not, it doesn’t matter. You still have a life to live. ”

Gonzales didn’t just help Christians, said Cantor Michael Zoosman, co-founder of the group L’chaim! Jews against the death penalty.

“I remember Jedidiah Murphy, who was executed last year, talking about how Ramiro had given him a balm of spiritual support,” Zoosman said in the clemency video. “Even if he [Gonzales] If he never sees the light of day as a free man, he can bring that inner light to others in the darkest corners of our society, just by being there and sharing the faith he has with them.”

Gonzales ends all his letters with the words “faith,” “hope,” and “love,” a reference to the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, which concludes, “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love.” But the greatest of these is love.”

“I’m on death row,” Gonzales said in the clemency video. “But I still have faith, I still have hope, and I can still love everyone around me.”