In July of 2022, a Texas death row prisoner named Ramiro Gonzales was just days away from being executed. Gonzales was convicted of raping and killing a woman in 2006 when they were both 18 years old.
Before the state could take his life however, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted the execution so that a lower court could review part of the case.
Shortly before the stay was issued, an article appeared in The Marshall Project featuring a psychiatrist who testified at Gonzales’ original trial, Edward Gripon. Gripon said he no longer believed Gonzales to be a danger to society.
That revelation helped buy Gonzales more time, but his death appears imminent once again. His execution is scheduled for this Wednesday, June 26.
Maurice Chammah, an Austin-based journalist for The Marshall Project, interviewed Gonzales several times, and spoke to Texas Standard about his case. Listen to the story above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: In this case, you interviewed the psychiatrist who appeared at sentencing, Edward Gripon. Why did he change his mind about whether Gonzales is a dangerous person?
Maurice Chammah: So he had testified at Gonzales’ trial, and said that he had antisocial personality disorder. Gonzales was himself still in his 20s when he had this conversation with Gripon and the man that Gripon met seemed very sort of scary and dangerous – like he had not really reckoned with his crime.
But fast forward more than a decade and Gripon goes back to death row where Gonzales appears to have utterly transformed himself. He’s very spiritual. He’s converted to evangelical, non-denominational Christianity. He really speaks about taking responsibility for the crime and his sense of apology towards the family of his victim, Bridget Townsend.
And Gripon comes back and tells us in an interview, “you know, I really don’t think this man is going to be dangerous. I think that, my initial prediction turned out to be wrong.”
So the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals thought that this was compelling enough to send back to the lower court. What exactly happened there?
Well, the court particularly focused on the fact that Gripon had also used some debunked statistics. He had made some claims about, you know, the sort of statistical likelihood that someone would be dangerous in the future. So they decided to send it back down to a lower court and to see whether that really prejudiced Gonzales and was integral to his death sentence.
The courts eventually rule, however, that it was not – that the sort of mistake, here the debunked statistics, were not sort of bad enough, so to speak, to stop the execution. And the execution was reset for this Wednesday.
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Do they have any bearing on whether or not the convicted person here, Gonzales, had actually committed the crime?
He confessed to it, and there was really no doubt that it was him.
Bridget Townsend was his drug dealer’s girlfriend. Gonzales fully takes responsibility for the crime and really describes sort of a very low point that he was at when he was 18 years old, still a teenager, and killed this woman.
So the only new information here has to do with the evaluation by the psychiatrist in the sentencing phase. And I guess the lower court decided that that should not be dispositive in whether or not the death sentence should be applied. And that’s now on tap. Is that right?
Yes. I mean, the the real question here, I think, is that the Texas death penalty law is, I think, unique in the United States, in that juries have to decide, “is this person going to be dangerous in the future? Are they at risk of presenting a continuing threat to society?” That’s some of the language in the law.
And that means that at sentencing trials you frequently have, say, a psychiatrist like Edward Gripon who comes in with more scientific gravity to say to the jury, “I’ve interviewed this person, I understand psychology, and you can really hang your hat sending this person to execution, knowing that if you didn’t, they really might kill someone else.”
His case stands out because of the extent to which he has appeared to transform himself. So he went through a faith-based Christian program, and he became a peer counselor to other men on death row. He’s really kind of almost like a lay minister on death row. And so everyone around him thinks, you know, this really gives lie to the whole basis of Texas death penalty law, because if you’re sending people to execution based on the idea that they’re going to be dangerous, you really don’t know.
We’re not just simply that good at predicting the future, even psychiatrists. And when the psychiatrist changed his mind, it really kind of undermined the entire almost philosophical and legal basis for this death sentence.
Could the Court of Criminal Appeals intervene again?
There are appeals that seek to stop the execution based on the idea that he’s transformed himself and is no longer a continuing threat to society, and so that anchor of his death sentence should be wiped away.
And then also there’s the governor – you know, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rules on these cases. And, ultimately, it could be up to Abbott whether he wants to grant a either brief reprieve for Mr. Gonzales, or take him off death row entirely.
