A Latino man will receive the lethal injection in Texas this Wednesday accompanied by a pastor who, inside the death chamber, will hold his hand and pray aloud during "the most stressful and difficult moment of his life."
Pastor Dana Moore will be able to accompany John Henry Ramírez, sentenced to death for stabbing a market employee 29 times in 2004, after a request that reached the Supreme Court delayed the execution, scheduled for September.
It will be the first time that Moore and Ramírez will have physical contact in the five years they have known each other, since they have only spoken through the plexiglass in the multiple visits that the pastor has made to see Ramírez on death row.
"Our society would be so much better if John was allowed to live," Moore told CNN, still in "denial" over the imminent death of his friend and congregation ward.
“Wouldn't that be better than executing it?
If he is executed on October 5, will we really be much more protected on October 6?” added Moore, 59.
Ramírez had requested that his spiritual adviser stand by his side during the execution, hold his hand and pray aloud in the death chamber, which is prohibited by Texas criminal law.
The Supreme Court ruled in March that not allowing him violated his religious freedoms.
The prisoner was sentenced to death for the murder of Pablo Castro in July 2004, father of nine children and grandfather of 14, according to court records.
"He Needs That Love"
Moore and Ramírez met through Janice Trujillo, a member of the pastor's congregation, who was visiting Ramírez in jail to teach him about the Bible and talk with him.
Over the years, Trujillo and Ramírez sent each other letters, and in one of them, he
asked her to join the church.
Trujillo, by then, had already told the story of Ramírez in the congregation and had given testimony of his approach to God.
Photo of John Henry Ramirez provided by the Texas Department of Justice. Texas Department of Justice via AP
That's when Moore began visiting Ramirez at the Livingston County State Jail in Texas.
"[He] is one of my church members," the pastor thought then.
"Why don't I go visit him?"
During their visits, Moore told CNN, they bought
snacks
from a vending machine and
discussed life, Moore's family and Ramirez's pending execution
.
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9, 202100:23
"There's no one there [in jail] who loves him and cares about him. I want to be there and let him know I'm here for him," Moore said.
"And love is, in part, that."
Moore added that he and Ramírez often pray together and tell each other that they love each other.
Their relationship, the pastor said, "is a little unusual but he needs that love."
The power of physical contact
"Human contact has importance and power," Moore wrote in an affidavit in support of Ramirez's request that the pastor be allowed into the death chamber.
Ramírez's execution was scheduled for September 8, 2021, but was stayed due to litigation that ended up in the Supreme Court.
"I need to be in physical contact with John Ramirez
during the most stressful and difficult time of his life
," the pastor wrote in his statement, "to give him comfort."
[A Second Inmate Gets His Execution Delayed in Texas on “Religious Freedom Grounds”]
This will not be the first time that Moore has witnessed the execution of one of his congregation's faithful, but it will be the first time that he has entered and accompanied him in the death chamber.
Moore witnessed the execution of Joseph Garcia, executed in 2018 for killing a police officer.
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"It was the longest 15 minutes of my life," the pastor said.
"It was very strange to see someone executed and their life taken against their will."
