The Supreme Court stayed the execution of a Texas inmate Thursday night on the grounds that the state violated his religious rights by denying him the presence of his Buddhist spiritual adviser.
The court ruled in a 7 to 2 decision that the religious liberty of the prisoner, convicted murderer Patrick Murphy, would have been violated if he were put to death.
Writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, noted that Texas law allows Christian or Muslim religious advisers present, but advisers of other religions cannot be in the execution room. “In my view, the Constitution prohibits such denominational discrimination,” he wrote.
Kavanaugh was joined by Justices Roberts, Alito, Kagan, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor. Justices Thomas and Gorsuch dissented.
Murphy was found guilty of the murder of police officer Aubrey Hawkins on Christmas Eve, 2000. His execution had been scheduled for March 28, 2019.
Lower courts agreed with the state’s decision to move ahead with Murphy’s execution without a Buddhist spiritual adviser present in the execution chamber. Just the day before, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that “the proper time for raising such claims has long since passed.”
The Becket Fund, an advocacy group that focuses on religious liberty litigation nationwide, filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court Thursday on behalf of Murphy, saying that the religious liberty questions in his case “go to whether the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment protects a condemned man’s religious exercise in seeking comfort of clergy in the execution chamber.”
Kavanaugh explained the court’s decision to stay the execution by noting that governmental discrimination against religion violates the Constitution.
He wrote that Texas could determine how to fix the situation, but that it may not “allow Christian or Muslim inmates but not Buddhist inmates to have a religious adviser of their religion in the execution room.”
In a statement provided to the Washington Examiner, Eric Rassbach, the vice president and senior counsel at Becket, said: “Religious liberty won today. The Supreme Court made it clear that the First Amendment applies to every American, no matter their faith… In his last moments, a condemned man can receive both comfort from a minister of his own faith, and equal treatment under the law.”
The decision struck some as a departure from a 5-4 decision decision made by the Supreme Court in a similar case in February. In Dunn v. Ray, the Supreme Court overruled a stay on execution that a lower court had granted and allowed for the execution of murderer Domineque Ray in Alabama to proceed even though the state denied Ray’s request for a Muslim spiritual adviser to be present. A state-employed Christian minister was allowed to be present.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit stayed the execution, but it was the Supreme Court that allowed the execution to move forward, agreeing with the prison that Ray made his request too late. Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Roberts, and Alito decided to allow the execution to take place, while Justices Kagan, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor dissented.
In her dissent, Kagan wrote: “Here, Ray has put forward a powerful claim that his religious rights will be violated at the moment the State puts him to death. The Eleventh Circuit wanted to hear that claim in full. Instead, this Court short-circuits that ordinary process — and itself rejects the claim with little briefing and no argument — just so the State can meet its preferred execution date. I respectfully dissent.”
The Supreme Court’s decision in February was criticized by legal commentators from both the Left and the Right.
Eric Rassbach of Becket argued that Ray’s case “was briefed as last-minute, death-penalty gamesmanship,” whereas Murphy’s case was legitimate.
