In 2006, Ramiro Gonzales was sentenced to loss of life in Texas as punishment for kidnapping, raping and killing Bridget Townsend once they had been each 18 years previous.
There have been indications that Gonzales didn’t symbolize the “worst of the worst” type of felony that the loss of life penalty is supposedly reserved for. Like many on loss of life row, he endured horrific abuse and neglect as a baby. He turned to medicine and alcohol as a teen to manage; he killed Townsend, his drug supplier’s girlfriend, whereas making an attempt to steal medicine. After he was arrested for sexually assaulting a unique lady, Gonzales confessed to the homicide. He had turned 18 two months earlier than the killing, making him barely sufficiently old to be legally eligible for a loss of life sentence.
In Texas, jurors on loss of life penalty circumstances are instructed to foretell whether or not the defendant is prone to commit future acts of violence. A psychiatrist, Dr. Edward Gripon, was pivotal in convincing jurors that Gonzales derived pleasure from sexual assault, was unlikely to cease, and was a poor candidate for rehabilitation. Fifteen years later, Gripon visited Gonzales on loss of life row and reevaluated him. This led Gripon to reverse his opinion, citing a previous reliance on a debunked statistic and a witness assertion that has since been recanted. In his second analysis, Gripon wrote that “it’s my opinion, to an inexpensive psychiatric likelihood, that he [Gonzales] doesn’t pose a menace of future hazard to society.”
It was the one time that Gripon had ever issued a report altering his opinion in a loss of life penalty case, the psychiatrist informed The Marshall Venture in 2022. Regardless of Gripon’s dramatic reversal, Texas plans to execute 41-year-old Gonzales on Wednesday, by deadly injection.
Gonzales has expressed deep regret for his crime. “I do know my apologies can’t even start to deliver you peace of thoughts and therapeutic, however I really feel that I ought to nonetheless inform you how sorry I’m for all of the ache and anguish you could have suffered due to my actions,” he wrote in an apology letter to the Townsend household in 2022, which was excerpted in a petition for clemency filed by Gonzales’ attorneys earlier this month. “I’m sorry, deeply sorry, that I took what was so valuable to you and I do know there’s nothing I can do or say to make it higher.”
Gonzales was born in 1982 to a 17-year-old lady who struggled with drug and alcohol dependancy, in response to the clemency petition. His mom drank and used medicine all through her being pregnant, and, at one level, deliberately overdosed in an unsuccessful effort to terminate the being pregnant. After his delivery, his mom gave him as much as her dad and mom. He didn’t meet his father till he was 19, once they had been each locked up on the county jail.
The rejection from Gonzales’ mom was “ever-present,” in response to the clemency petition, which famous that she went on to marry and have two extra kids whom she raised, regardless of by no means acknowledging Gonzales as her son. His grandparents labored lengthy days, leaving him unsupervised. Gonzales was repeatedly sexually abused, together with by a cousin, beginning on the age of 6, the petition mentioned.
Bandera, the city Gonzales grew up in, was “hell on earth,” a cousin, recognized solely as Jessica, mentioned in a video submitted in help of Gonzales’ clemency utility.
“There was loads of sexual abuse within the household,” Jessica mentioned. “That was one thing that, until at the present time, just isn’t actually talked about. And it was not talked about, it was by no means stopped, as a result of that abuse continued on to the following era, which was Ramiro and me.”
Texas Defender Service/Elisabetta Diorio
The primary time that Gonzales discovered care and affection from a member of the family was throughout elementary faculty, when his uncle married a girl named Loretta. She “hugged him, praised him, and confirmed him the love and affection he craved,” in response to the clemency petition. When Gonzales was 15, Loretta was killed in a automobile crash with a drunk driver. Devastated, Gonzales turned to cocaine and methamphetamine to self-medicate. He dropped out of college and started stealing and forging checks to pay for medicine.
Shortly after his 18th birthday, Gonzales tried to rob his supplier’s residence. Townsend was inside, and when she tried to name her boyfriend, Gonzales assaulted and killed her.
Gripon testified at trial that recidivism charges amongst individuals who commit intercourse crimes are as excessive as 80% — a statistic that was broadly used on the time to justify excessive punishments. Years later, when a authorized scholar tried to determine the supply of the 80% declare, he discovered that it got here from an unsubstantiated assertion in a 1986 Psychology At present article. Current peer-reviewed research have discovered recidivism charges under 20% after 25 years and that these charges are “considerably decrease” amongst youthful offenders, like Gonzales, Gripon famous in his second analysis.
In court docket, Gripon had additionally relied on written statements signed by Gonzales’ cellmate, Frederick Ozuna. The statements described Gonzales confessing to returning to the crime scene three or 4 instances to have “intercourse with the physique” and saying that “he would do it once more” and “loved it.”
At trial, Ozuna tried to invoke his proper to silence after which tried to recant his statements. However the prosecutor continued to press, till Ozuna agreed to reply affirmatively to a sequence of main questions in regards to the statements. Ozuna later totally recanted in a sworn declaration, describing how an officer threatened him with a harsher sentence if he didn’t assist vilify Gonzales. “Ramiro by no means mentioned these issues to me,” Ozuna wrote within the declaration, referring to the claims about assaulting the sufferer’s useless physique.
After Gonzales was convicted, he was appointed a lawyer named Terry McDonald to symbolize him in state habeas proceedings, an opportunity to current proof of constitutional points at trial. McDonald by no means met with Gonzales, requested funding for consultants, interviewed relations and different witnesses, or performed evaluations of Gonzales, in response to Gonzales’ present attorneys. Finally, McDonald filed a nine-page habeas petition (such paperwork are sometimes a whole bunch of pages lengthy), which was dismissed by the court docket as “frivolous.”
Gonzales was beforehand set to be executed in 2022. Weeks earlier than the scheduled killing, Gripon offered Gonzales’ appellate attorneys along with his reevaluation report, admitting to counting on debunked info at trial and concluding that Gonzales didn’t pose a future hazard. Two days earlier than the execution, the Texas Courtroom of Prison Appeals granted a keep and directed the trial court docket to think about Gonzales’ declare that his loss of life sentence resulted from false skilled testimony.
With out conducting a listening to or reviewing any further proof, the trial court docket signed verbatim the state’s “findings of truth and conclusions of regulation,” which beneficial denying Gonzales aid. (That is frequent observe: A 2018 report printed within the Houston Legislation Evaluate discovered that judges adopted prosecutors’ findings of their entirety in 96% of 191 circumstances that the authors reviewed in Texas’ Harris County.) The Courtroom of Prison Appeals adopted the trial court docket’s advice, and Gonzales was given one other execution date.
Texas Defender Service/Elisabetta Diorio
Whereas awaiting trial, Gonzales had grow to be a religious Christian.
“He mentioned, ‘I can’t change the previous, however I hope I can show myself sooner or later,’” mentioned Clinton Younger, who was incarcerated with Gonzales on Texas loss of life row earlier than Younger’s conviction was overturned on account of a shocking revelation that the prosecutor on his case was additionally on the payroll of the choose. “He walked the stroll.”
In 2021, Gonzales tried to donate a kidney, an effort blocked by the Texas Division of Prison Justice, which mentioned the “unsure timeline” of the donation might intrude along with his execution. “How can I give again life? That is most likely one of many closest issues to doing that,” Gonzales informed The Marshall Venture in 2022.
Gonzales earned the equal of a bachelor’s diploma from a Bible school and wrote sermons for the jail’s radio station. When the jail launched “faith-based pods” in 2021, Gonzales grew to become one of many program’s first peer coordinators. In an interview recorded for his clemency video, Gonzales described his work ministering to different individuals on “loss of life watch,” who had been additionally staring down an execution date.
“The very first thing we do to minister to them is make sure that they received clothes, make sure that they received meals,” Gonzales mentioned. “After which God comes subsequent, within the sense the place it’s like: ‘Hey man, I simply need you to know, I’m Christian. I’ve a date. When you have doubts or if there’s any emotional struggles proper now since you’re on loss of life watch, we will speak about it. Whether or not you could have a date or not, it doesn’t matter. You continue to have a life to stay.’”
Gonzales didn’t simply assist Christians, mentioned Cantor Michael Zoosman, a co-founder of the group, L’chaim! Jews In opposition to The Loss of life Penalty.
“I bear in mind Jedidiah Murphy, who was executed final yr, speaking about how Ramiro had offered a balm of non secular help for him,” Zoosman mentioned within the clemency video. “Even when he [Gonzales] by no means sees the sunshine of day as a free particular person, he can deliver that interior mild to others within the darkest corners of our society, simply by being there and sharing the religion that he has with them.”
Gonzales closes all of his letters with the phrases “religion,” “hope” and “love,” a reference to the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, which concludes, “And now these three stay: religion, hope and love. However the biggest of those is love.”
“I’m on loss of life row,” Gonzales mentioned within the clemency video. “However I nonetheless have religion, I nonetheless have hope, and I can nonetheless love everyone round me.”