2 death penalty cases similar to the Supreme Court and diverging results: NPR

Two Supreme Court decisions barely a few hours before a scheduled execution. Two decisions seven weeks apart. Two decisions on the same subject. Except that in one, a Muslim was put to death without his imam being allowed to follow him into the execution hall, and in the other, the execution of the execution. a Buddhist was temporarily interrupted because his minister had been deprived of the same right.

The two seemingly contradictory decisions are so enigmatic that even lawyers scratch their heads and offer explanations they honestly admit are only speculative.

On Feb. 7, by a five-to-four vote, the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama could execute the execution of Domineque Hakim Ray, a Muslim convicted of murder. The 11th circuit court of appeal had temporarily blocked execution because the state had forbidden the convict to have a Muslim imam by his side in the death chamber. Alabama said only the Christian minister of the prison would be allowed to enter.

Judge Elena Kagan of the Supreme Court, writing for the four dissidents, described the decision as "profoundly false".

Comments from right, left and center denounced this decision as a violation of the Constitution's prohibition of favoring one religion over another.

"The case is another example that can be cited by those who rightly observe two rules of religious freedom in this country – one for Christians and one for all others," said the Baptist Joint Committee for Freedom of Religion. religion.

"The state has an obligation to protect and facilitate the free exercise of a person's faith, and not to seek reasons to deny his consolation at the time of his death," wrote David French in the conservative book. National examination.

"In thirty years of writing about freedom of religion, I do not remember such a scandalous case," wrote the more liberal Professor Yale Law, Stephen Carter, opinion columnist in Bloomberg .

On the evening of March 28th, by a vote of seven to two, the court granted a stay of execution at eleven o'clock to Patrick Henry Murphy, a Texas Buddhist prisoner who was to die that night and who was arrested. was denied a Buddhist religious advisor at his side in the death chamber.

So what's the difference between the two cases?

In the first case, the majority conservative court declared that the Muslim prisoner had waited too long to request an imam. The execution date was set in the month of November, the court said, and the convict waited 10 days before the scheduled execution to ask his religious adviser to accompany him.

Why did not his lawyers apply earlier?

"We did not know it," says John Anthony Palombi, the federal public defender who first met Ray two weeks before the execution.

At this first meeting, the convict told the lawyers that he wished his imam to be present at his death and that the director had told him a day earlier that this would not be possible.

Palombi notes that Alabama does not have a public enforcement protocol and Ray had thought that, since his imam had been allowed to visit him regularly in his cell, including the holding cell 20 feet away the death chamber, the imam could also be with him. in the chamber of death. Not so.

In court, Alabama said its protocol provided that only employees of the Department of Corrections, including a Christian minister, were allowed to go to the death chamber.

Prison officials have raised security concerns, saying that a non-employee could disrupt the process or faint. This was not enough for the 11th circuit panel of judges, which suspended execution on February 6th to examine the issue of religious discrimination. A day later, the Supreme Court lifted the suspension without explanation, except to say that Ray had waited too long to oppose the exclusion of his imam.

The court's decision, seven weeks later, was against Patrick Henry Murphy, a Buddhist who was to die in Texas. After learning of Ray's decision, Buddhist Murphy asked his religious advisor to accompany him during his planned execution 30 days later.

Reverend Hui-Yong Shih had long been allowed in the prison to advise Murphy. He was even in his cell, five or six steps from the death chamber, on Murphy's day of execution.

Texas, unlike Alabama, has a public enforcement protocol that allows a convicted prisoner to be "accompanied" by his religious advisor for execution. But the state interprets this language as only targeting religious advisers who work for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. There is a qualified Christian minister and an imam, but not a Buddhist.

Murphy's lawyer, David Dow, of the Law Center of the University of Houston, could not have been more surprised when his client, unlike Ray, was temporarily spared this week.

This time, the High Court ruled that Texas could only execute if the state asked for a full hearing on the issue before the judges or if the state would not allow Murphy to 39 with him in the chamber of death his Buddhist religious counselor or another The choice of the Buddhist minister of state.

Judges Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch disagreed. They would have let the execution go from the front.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh, writing for himself, said that in his view, the state should treat all denominations "in the same way". This means, he said, that the convict, regardless of his religion, be allowed to have a religious advisor of the same religion in the house of the dead, or that all religious counselors must see the same. execution in a separate room with other witnesses. "The choice belongs to the state," he said.

Normally, the Supreme Court does not have the habit of cutting a legal salami as finely, but it is almost unheard of to have two results so divergent in two cases in the space of a few weeks only. Neither Dow 's attorney nor the Palombi' s lawyer had what he considered a satisfactory explanation.