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Thread: Ramiro Felix Gonzales - Texas Execution - June 26, 2024

  1. #21
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Geez, this woman lives near me. Honestly, it's like one big giant left-wing utopia where I live..sigh.


    Bri-anne Swan and Ramiro Gonzales talk on the Polunsky Unit on Texas death row.



    My friend on death row: How a Toronto mom befriended a death-row inmate----In November, a Toronto singer-songwriter who befriended a death-row inmate will fly to Texas to watch him die


    By Amy Dempsey
    The Toronto Star

    In early November, Bri-anne Swan, a Toronto singer-songwriter and 33-year-old mother of two, will fly to Texas to witness the execution of a man with whom she has developed an unlikely friendship.

    Swan has been exchanging letters with death-row inmate Ramiro Gonzales for 2 years. They had never met before she wrote her 1st note to him in 2014. They were born and raised 5,000 kilometres apart - she in small-town Ontario, he in poverty in rural Texas.

    Gonzales, 33, has been in prison for his entire adult life. He was sentenced to die after he confessed to the 2001 murder of an 18-year-old woman in Medina County, Texas. Now he draws pictures for Swan's children in his cell. He pens poetry. He uses an ultrasound image of her son as a bookmark. He writes to her about his faith in God and his regret.

    "People aren't just the worst thing they have ever done or the best thing they have ever done," Swan says.

    Swan lives in Leslieville with her husband, Jason Meyers, and their 2 boys - Simon, 2, and Isaiah, 4. She is training to be a psychotherapist. Meyers works in the non-profit sector and is studying to be a minister in the United Church of Canada. They are members of the Rosedale United Church, a congregation with a strong tradition of community service and advocacy.

    Despite the demands of her studies and home life, Swan has lately been writing to Gonzales every other day. She has petitioned Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the state's board of parole and pardons to grant him clemency. In June, after Gonzales invited her to his execution, she held a church concert to fundraise for her trip. In August, after his original execution date was postponed, she kept her travel plans and flew south to meet him.

    Theirs is not a typical prison pen-pal relationship. For one thing, Swan made it clear from the outset that she is happily married and interested only in friendship, and Gonzales told her he preferred it that way.

    "Please do not think that I wish for you to pity me at any level," he wrote in his 1st letter. "Initially, I requested a friend and I hope that we can become just that."

    Though Swan's husband and church congregation have been supportive, some friends and family members do not understand what has driven her to do this. Those who don't get it have avoided voicing their disagreement, but Swan can feel their questions hanging in the silence:

    Why did she initiate a friendship with a faraway stranger who committed terrible crimes?

    And why on earth would she agree to fly to Texas to watch him die?

    Becoming pen pals


    2 years ago, when Swan was pregnant with her 2nd child and battling insomnia, she got lost in a late-night Internet search on capital punishment, a practice she had long been appalled by.

    Scrolling through profiles on a website where death-row prisoners advertise for pen pals, Swan clicked on the name Ramiro Gonzales and saw a picture of a boyish Hispanic man with a tattoo on his left cheek.

    Swan was moved by his life story. According to local news reports, Gonzales had been abandoned by his biological mother and raised by his grandparents. As a child, he had been sexually abused by a male relative. He lost a beloved aunt in a car crash.

    As a teen, he became addicted to drugs and alcohol, which led to "stupidity," he wrote in his profile.

    In 2002, Gonzales was found guilty of kidnapping and raping a real estate agent in Bandera County, near San Antonio, Texas. While awaiting transport to prison, he confessed to a 2nd crime: the murder of 18-year-old Bridget Townsend, who had gone missing in a neighbouring county in 2001. Investigators had no leads on her disappearance until Gonzales told them he had kidnapped Townsend from the home of his drug dealer and drove her to a secluded area, where he raped and shot her.

    In the decade since he was sentenced to death in 2006, Gonzales has found God and expressed deep remorse for his crimes.

    "I'm a very spiritual person and I totally live by integrity, self dignity, and self respect," he wrote in his pen-pal profile. "I hope I qualify for someone's friendship."

    While Swan and Gonzales clearly came from different worlds, she noted the similarities in their personal histories. They were the same age. They had both grown up on farms. They were both Christians.

    "I think I'm going to write to him," she told her husband a few days after discovering the pen-pal page.

    Swan grew up with 3 younger brothers just outside the village of Moonstone, Ont., near Orillia. Her father was a butcher who also ran a small business selling and installing satellite dishes. Her mother worked for various social service organizations.

    In high school, Swan befriended a set of twins who started a social justice club and quickly became one of the group's most passionate members. She joined Amnesty International letter-writing campaigns, participated in 30-hour famine fundraisers and spearheaded a move to bring a guest speaker into her high school to discuss homophobia.

    Those who know her well say she has always been a champion of the underdog. She is not content to accept simple answers to big questions. It is in her nature to assume things are more complicated than they seem, and to search for underlying causes.

    "She always was different than everyone else, in a good way," says Georgina Lopez, one of the twins from the social justice club. "She can be really passionate about things, and she likes to be kind of controversial." Swan was always protesting an injustice or standing behind a cause, Lopez says, so her latest endeavour came as no surprise.

    "It sounds just like Bri-anne - getting to know someone and seeing the true personality behind them, the true person."
    Swan's 1st letter to Gonzales was a simple introduction: "My name is Bri-anne. I live in Toronto, Canada. I saw your profile online looking for a pen pal and am wondering if you might be interested in writing with me."

    His reply was earnest: "I wish to speak to your heart as a person in the hopes that you would give me a chance to bring before you the person that I really am."

    Jason Meyers says his wife's friendship with Gonzales and her growing involvement in the anti-death penalty movement has given her a renewed sense of purpose. As Christians and members of the United Church, he says, it is their duty to find ways to bring light into the world, especially in places that don�t get a lot of light - and that's exactly what Swan is doing.

    "I'm really proud of the work that she has done and the relationship that she has developed with this person who is about as far out on the margins of society as you can get," he says.

    Swan had another reason for reaching out to Gonzales that she was not immediately conscious of. She noted that he was both a victim and perpetrator of sexual assault. Swan, too, had experienced sexual violence in her past. She felt empathy for the boy who had been through what she had, and curiosity about the man who committed sexual assault.

    "I don't even think it was totally thought out but there was maybe this piece of wanting to understand how the gears worked in somebody who could do something like that," she says.

    Swan says that if she set out unconsciously looking for answers, she never really got them because Gonzales is a different person today.

    "While the crime he committed was heinous, the man who is set to be executed is not the same boy who killed Bridget 15 years ago," she said recently in a letter to the Texas governor, which she shared on her website, where she has been writing about her friendship with Gonzales. "18-year-old Ramiro was broken, hopeless and severely addicted to drugs - substances he turned to as a teenager to cope with the loss of a beloved aunt and years of sexual abuse by a male relative."

    Swan is aware that she only knows the best of Gonzales, and that there may be another side of him that he doesn't reveal in his letters, but she believes him to be genuine and truly remorseful. "The Ramiro I know is a very gentle, kind person," she says.

    In May, after nearly 2 years of letter writing, Gonzales asked her to attend his execution. After discussing it with her husband, she accepted.

    "There is a certain honour and privilege in being asked to be one of the few people that can be there," she says. "If it makes even the teensiest little bit of difference to him that I would be in the room, then I want to be there."

    Swan can understand why some people don't get it. Her mother has expressed concern for her safety - travelling alone to a prison in Texas, especially near the end of a fraught U.S. presidential election campaign. Her father, she says, has been mostly silent on the issue.

    "They didn't know I was writing to him until I explained that I was going to his execution, so it's a big thing to drop on your parents," she says.

    In early summer, when she learned that Gonzales's August execution date had been postponed until November, Swan decided to visit him anyway.

    The visit


    In the weeks leading up to her Texas trip, Swan felt nervous. She wondered what would happen if she and Gonzales had nothing to talk about in person. What if they didn't connect in life as they had through letters?

    In early August, she flew from Toronto to Houston and checked into an Airbnb. The next afternoon, she drove her rental car 100 kilometres north to the town of Livingston, home of the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, which houses the state's 300 death-row inmates.

    After a bit of confusion getting through security, Swan was ushered into a small room and seated in a booth on one side of a glass wall. She got snacks from the vending machine while she waited. Gonzales had requested 2 salads with ranch dressing, a banana, yogurt, chips and a Dr Pepper, which he told her would be the best food he'd have all week. Swan got herself a root beer.

    Around 8 that Saturday night, Gonzales was brought into the room and seated on the other side of the glass. They both beamed, Swan says, and any anxieties she had about them not connecting faded within the first few minutes.

    "It didn't actually feel like this was the 1st time we had met," she later reflected. "It was as comfortable as sitting in a maximum security prison, talking to somebody behind glass could possibly be."

    Over several days and 3 visits, they spoke through the glass over the crackling prison telephones about their families, their faith in God, his life in prison, her music.

    Outside the prison, Swan met Gonzales's sister, who sent her home with a bag of tamales. She met his lawyer, who is working on ways to further delay or halt the execution. She appeared as a guest singer on a Houston radio station that hosts a prison show.

    The goodbye was difficult. It wasn't like they could cheerfully look forward to November.

    "Essentially, the next time we see each other, he is going to be preparing to be killed by the state of Texas," Swan says.

    Swan often thinks about the families of Gonzales's victims, and wonders how they cope with everything that they have been through. They, too, have her empathy. She has received angry letters from people who have read her blog posts about Gonzales and tell her that he does not deserve a friend.

    "I am aware that I only know the best of Ramiro," she says. "No one is advocating that he be released from jail, just that he not be executed."

    In a reflection posted on her website after the August visit, Swan made a heartfelt pitch to those who wish Gonzales and others like him dead.

    "I would challenge anybody who is a proponent of the death penalty to spend some time getting to know somebody like Ramiro," she wrote. "Write with them. Meet them. Learn about their life story. Do it with an open heart and then at the end decide whether or not this person should be killed."

    Excerpts from Gonzales's letters


    "Concerning your statement about, going through the most difficult times creates the greatest spiritual or personal growth, well, for me, I still do not understand it all. The truth is, I am here to die. In reality, I am merely waiting for my number to be called, and then it is off to the slaughter house. Sounds crazy and visious, but that is the truth."

    "It is a vitality to stay strong mentally in this place because if you do not, you will loose you mind. I have seen a few of the strongest guys one day in their right minds and the next day lost, just totally lost mentally."

    "I am also glad that you guys really liked the drawing that I did for Isaiah. I am sure he too was thrilled. I will say this again, I wish I could have seen his face. It gives me joy to be able to have that part in their lives as well. Which is something that I wanted for you to know. I do thank you for allowing me that much Bri-anne. Being a part of your life and the lives of your kiddos."

    https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/...rful-bond.html
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  2. #22
    Senior Member CnCP Legend FFM's Avatar
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    The 5th Circuit denied stays of execution based on the potency of the pentobarbital that was going to be used on our death row inmates. Not that it matters now anyway.

    http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions...-20556-CV0.pdf

  3. #23
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Appeals, Waived Appeals, and Conflicting Findings

    5th Circuit strikes down request to test death drugs

    The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has denied a motion for stay of execution pending appeal for Terry Edwards and Ramiro Gonzales, two death row inmates named in the five-inmate petition seeking to require that the state of Texas test their doses of compounded pentobarbital (the drug used for executions) before carrying out each killing. Three judges from the federal court were "not persuaded these prisoners have made the showing required" for the stay, the 5th stated in a Sept. 12 opinion. Circuit judge Patrick Higginbotham wrote that the petitioning inmates "failed to reach the Eighth Amendment bar on unnecessarily severe pain that is sure, very likely, and imminent." The three other named inmates – Jeffery Wood, Rolando Ruiz, and Robert Jennings – have each received stays on their executions for reasons outside of this particular issue.

    In the court's denial, Higginbotham wrote that since unconsciousness precedes death when pentobarbital is the sole drug used to execute, the "problem of conscious pain and suffering" is "effectively obviat[ed]." Essentially, if inmates aren't alert to feel and express their pain, does it really matter if their death is painful? The logic is rooted in part on the belief that the state has used compounded pentobarbital to execute 32 inmates "without issue" since turning to the compounded drug in 2013. But the inmates have argued that this thinking is flawed: The state's acquisition of compounded pentobarbital is hardly an aboveboard process, with shipments of the drug coming to Huntsville from unidentified compounding pharmacies, and a Department of Criminal Justice that won't disclose what's in the cocktail.

    The state granted one inmate the right to have his dose tested for purity before his execution in 2015 when the Attorney General's Office extended the courtesy to Perry Williams. But then a state district judge withdrew Williams' July 14, 2016, execution date when TDCJ curiously failed to run its promised test in the six months after Williams received his death date. Wood et al.'s attorneys have argued that if the state sees fit to grant Williams new testing, it should serve as precedent for other inmates. Higginbotham's brief indicates that the 5th Circuit will rule otherwise, writing that an equal protection claim premised on differential treatment for those not considered a "class" (as inmates aren't) may only be reviewed in the context of a "class of one." That, he said, would apply to Williams, not the other five inmates: "The prisoners' primary contention now is that re-testing in [Williams' case] created a right to re-testing for all prisoners, a novel and flawed invocation of equal protection doctrine."

    Edwards is currently scheduled for execution on Oct. 19. Gonzales is set for the gurney two weeks later: Nov. 2. They await word on their appeal alongside Wood, Ruiz, and Jennings.

    "A knowing, intelligent, and voluntary decision"

    Barney Fuller was the sixth inmate with a death date as of Aug. 12 – the only one not named on the petition seeking new testing on compounded drugs. Last December, Fuller filed a motion to hold a hearing on whether he's competent enough to waive his outstanding appeals and get on with his execution. The 58-year-old was sentenced to death in July 2004 for the grisly double murder of his Houston County neighbors, Annette and Nathan Copeland, with whom Fuller had a court date to determine what should be done about his habit of shooting guns off at their house. (Fuller pleaded guilty to the charge of capital murder at his trial.)

    A federal appeal filed in January indicates that efforts to save Fuller's life hinged on arguments that his trial attorneys provided him with weak counsel, but in late May Fuller went before U.S. federal judge Ron Clark in an effort to waive the appeal. In a June 1 opinion and order of dismissal, Clark wrote that Fuller "understands his legal position and the options available to him. He understands that a determination that he is competent to waive any further proceedings would stop his habeas review and allow the State to proceed with his execution." He said Fuller feels deserving of the punishment and is "ready to move on."

    Fuller is scheduled for execution on Wednesday, Oct 5. He'll be the 538th Texan executed since 1976 but only the seventh put to death this year. He'll be the first since Pablo Vasquez, killed on April 6.
    Supplemental copies of supplemental findings of Reed's facts

    Bastrop Visiting Judge Doug Shaver has taken rubber stamping to a new level. On Sept. 9, the retired judge appointed to consider the re-testing of DNA evidence in Rodney Reed's case, signed two pre-prepared Findings of Fact – one presented to him by the state and one by the defense – and sent both off to the Court of Criminal Appeals to rule on Reed's July 2014 motion. Naturally, those findings differed: The state's copy determined that the chain of custody had been disrupted, and DNA on certain items of evidence could be contaminated; the version Reed's camp sent to Shaver proposed testing could still be done. The Bastrop County District Attorney's Office has requested that the CCA return both docs to Shaver for clarification on his standing. Reed's attorney Bryce Benjet told the Austin American-Statesman last Friday that he intends to object to that suggestion, and will request that a new judge handle the case on the district level. "When you have an error of this magnitude, we think it's appropriate for the court to reassign the case to a judge who can issue orders based on the record," Benjet told the daily.

    http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/...ting-findings/
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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  4. #24
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Gonzales isn't listed on the Scheduled executions list anymore.

    http://tdcj.state.tx.us/death_row/dr...xecutions.html
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  5. #25
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Execution date withdrawn

    The inmate previously scheduled to die after Edwards, Ramiro Gonzales, also sees his death date on the move. Recently scheduled for Nov. 2, Gonzales' execution date was withdrawn late last month. His attorney Michael Gross did not respond to Chronicle calls and emails seeking clarification on why that date has been withdrawn. The case is held in Medina County, whose district clerk only indicates the date was swiped on Sept. 19.

    http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/...ling-the-deck/
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  6. #26
    Junior Member Stranger Don Sterk's Avatar
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    Wow, Texas is doing some weird stuff lately. Why are all these guys getting stays? If Barney Fuller had filed a half decent appeal, I'm sure he would have gotten a stay for some terrible reason. Anyone know what's going on in Texas??

  7. #27
    Senior Member Member OperaGhost84's Avatar
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    I thought execution orders were supposed to go *up* on election years?

    That's what the abolitionists keep saying anyways. "It's arbitrary because elected judges order more executions around November and blah blah blah"
    I am vehemently against Murder. That's why I support the Death Penalty.

  8. #28
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    i have herded abolitionists saying "DP won't bring us back the victims" that's a fact but punishment for murderers it is a must for me

  9. #29
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On July 26, 2018, Gonzales filed an appeal before the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

    https://dockets.justia.com/docket/ci...s/ca5/18-70024

  10. #30
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On September 17, 2019, the Fifth Circuit DENIED Gonzales' appeal. The panel was made up of Senior Judge Higginbotham (Reagan), Judge Dennis (Clinton) and Judge Graves (Obama).

    http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions...18-70024.0.pdf

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