Texas: On Eve of Execution, Inmate Fights for Buddhist Priest

HOUSTON (CN) – A Texas death-row inmate who believes chanting prayers with his Buddhist priest as he is executed will help him be reborn in the “Pure Land” has asked the Fifth Circuit for a stay because Texas will not let the priest accompany him in the execution room.

Patrick Henry Murphy, Jr., 57, was serving a 50-year sentence for aggravated sexual assault in December 2000, when he and six other inmates escaped from a prison in Kenedy, Texas.

Now known as the “Texas Seven,” some of the men held up a sporting goods store in Irving, Texas on Dec. 24, 2000.

Irving policeman Aubrey Hawkins pulled up to the store and was met with a hail of gunfire. The escaped convicts shot him 11 times, and then ran over his lifeless body as they fled with 44 stolen guns.

Six of the seven inmates were apprehended the following month after a friend of the owner of an RV park in Colorado saw a spot about them on the TV show “America’s Most Wanted” and told the owner he believed the men were staying on the property.

One of the men shot himself as police moved in. In 2003, a jury convicted Murphy of capital murder for Hawkins’ death and he was sentenced to death.

Murphy became an adherent of Pure Land Buddhism a decade ago, according to a lawsuit and motion to stay his execution filed Tuesday in Houston federal court.

“Accordingly, Murphy believes it is possible for him, after death, to be reborn in the Pure Land, a place where he could work towards enlightenment,” the petition states.

But Murphy, who is set to die by lethal injection Thursday night, believes he can only be reborn if he can focus on Buddha as the pentobarbital Texas uses to execute prisoners enters his veins and shuts down his organs.

Through his attorneys David Dow and Jeff Newberry, professors at the University of Houston Law Center, he asked the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to let his Buddhist spiritual adviser Rev. Hui-Yong Shih be beside him in the death chamber so they could chant prayers as he leaves this world.

The TDCJ denied his request because its policy is only its employees can be in the death chamber in Huntsville during executions.

The agency only employs Christian and Muslim chaplains and it did not respond to Murphy’s inquiry if it has any Buddhist priests on staff who could accompany him in the execution room.

Murphy says in his lawsuit he assumes the TDCJ restricts access to the execution room for security reasons, but Rev. Shih poses no risk as he’s been visiting Murphy in prison for the last six years.

He claims Texas’ policy violates the First Amendment, which bans Congress from passing laws that prohibit the free exercise of religion, or establish any religion.

He also says TDCJ’s policies run afoul of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. Passed by Congress in 2000, the law bars prison officials from interfering with “any exercise of religion” by inmates “whether or not compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief.”

U.S. District Judge Sim Lake denied Murphy’s motion to stay Tuesday afternoon, finding he had waited too long, “until the eve of his execution,” to make his case.

Murphy appealed to the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans on Wednesday morning.

His claims mirror arguments a Muslim death-row inmate in Alabama made in January. Domineque Ray, 42, said his execution would be unconstitutional because Alabama would not let his imam into the death room.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with him, but the U.S. Supreme Court reversed in a 5-4 decision.

The high court’s majority said Ray had waited too long, just 10 days before his death date, to bring a challenge in federal court. Ray was executed Feb. 7.

Murphy’s lawyers say the timing of his challenge differentiates his case from Ray’s.

“Murphy made his request to TDCJ an entire month before his scheduled execution. By doing so, Murphy gave TDCJ more than adequate time to address its interest in assuring his execution is secure,” his stay motion states.

If his efforts fail, Murphy will be the fourth U.S. inmate executed in 2019 and the fifth member of the Texas Seven executed by Texas, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Its executive director Robert Dunham told the Associated Press in February that U.S. states generally allow spiritual advisers to accompany inmates to the door of the execution room, but not into it.

A TDCJ spokesman told Courthouse News the agency does not employ any Buddhists who could serve as Murphy’s spiritual adviser in the execution room.

Source: courthousenews.com, Cameron Langford, March 27, 2019

⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Florida executes Michael Tanzi

Florida on Tuesday executed a death row inmate described by one local detective as a "fledgling serial killer" for the murder of a beloved Miami Herald employee. Florida executed Michael Tanzi on Tuesday, 25 years after the murder of beloved Miami Herald employee Janet Acosta, who was attacked in broad daylight on her lunch break in 2000. Michael Tanzi, 48, was executed by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison in Raiford and pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. ET.

South Carolina | Man who ambushed off-duty cop to face firing squad in second execution of its kind

Mikal Mahdi, 48, who was found guilty of killing an off-duty police officer and a convenience store worker, is the second inmate scheduled to executed by South Carolina's new firing squad A murderer who ambushed and shot an off duty police officer eight times before burning his body in a killing spree is set to become the second person to die by firing squad. South Carolina's highest court has rejected the last major appeal from Mikal Mahdi, 41, who is to be put to death with three bullets to the heart at 6pm on April 11 at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia. Mahdi's lawyers said his original lawyers put on a shallow case trying to spare his life that didn't call on relatives, teachers or people who knew him and ignored the impact of weeks spent in solitary confinement in prison as a teen.

Afghanistan | Four men publicly executed by Taliban with relatives of victims shooting them 'six or seven times' at sport stadium

Four men have been publicly executed by the Taliban, with relatives of their victims shooting them several times in front of spectators at a sport stadium. Two men were shot around six to seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the centre of Afghanistan's Badghis province, witnesses told an AFP journalist in the city. The men had been 'sentenced to retaliatory punishment' for shooting other men, after their cases were 'examined very precisely and repeatedly', the statement said. 'The families of the victims were offered amnesty and peace but they refused.'

South Carolina executes Mikal Mahdi

Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed for the 2004 murder of 56-year-old James Myers A man facing the death penalty for committing two murders was executed by firing squad on Friday, the second such execution in the US state of South Carolina this year. Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed for the 2004 murder of 56-year-old James Myers, an off-duty police officer, and the murder of a convenience store employee three days earlier. According to a statement from the prison, "the execution was performed by a three-person firing squad at 6:01 pm (2201 GMT)," with Mahdi pronounced dead four minutes later.

USA | Why the firing squad may be making a comeback

South Carolina plans to execute Mikal Mahdi on Friday for the murder of a police officer, draping a hood over his head and firing three bullets into his heart. The choice to die by firing squad – rather than lethal injection or the electric chair – was Mahdi’s own, his attorney said last month: “Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi has chosen the lesser of three evils.” If it proceeds, Mahdi’s execution would be the latest in a recent string of events that have put the spotlight on the firing squad as a handful of US death penalty states explore alternatives to lethal injection, by far the nation’s dominant execution method.

Louisiana | Lawyers of Jessie Hoffman speak about their final moments before execution

As Louisiana prepared its first execution in 15 years, a team of lawyers from Loyola Law were working to save Jessie Hoffman’s life. “I was a young lawyer three years out of law school, and Jessie was almost finished with his appeals at that time, and my boss told me we needed to file something for Jessie because he’s in danger of being executed,” Kappel said. Kappel and her boss came up with a civil lawsuit to file that said since they wouldn’t give him a protocol for his execution, he was being deprived of due process, and the lawsuit was in the legal process for the next 10 years.

Lethal Injection, Electric Chair, or Firing Squad? An Inhumane Decision for Death Row Prisoners

South Carolina resumed executions with the firing squad killing of Brad Sigmon last month. Mikal Madhi’s execution date is days away. The curtain shrieked as it was yanked open to reveal a 67-year-old man tied to a chair. His arms were pulled uncomfortably behind his back. The red bull’s-eye target on his chest rose and fell as he desperately attempted to still his breathing. The man, Brad Sigmon, smiled at his attorney, Bo King, seated in the front row before guards placed a black bag over his head. King said Sigmon appeared to be trying his best to put on a brave face for those who had come to bear witness.

I spent 16 years in solitary in South Carolina. This is what it did to me. | Opinion

South Carolinian Randy Poindexter writes about the effects 16 years of solitary confinement had on him ahead of South Carolina’s planned execution of Mikal Mahdi , who spent months in solitary as a young man. For 16 years, I lived in a concrete cell. Twenty-three hours a day, every day, for more than 3,000 days, South Carolina kept me in solitary confinement. I was a young man before I was sent to solitary — angry, untreated and unwell. I made mistakes. But I wasn’t sentenced to madness. That’s what solitary did to me. My mental health worsened with each passing day. At first, paranoia and depression set in. Then, hallucinations and self-mutilation. I talked to people who weren’t there. I cut myself to feel something besides despair. I could do nothing as four of my friends and fellow prisoners took their own lives rather than endure another day of torturous isolation.

Arizona | The cruelty of isolation: There’s nothing ‘humane’ about how we treat the condemned

On March 19, I served as a witness to the execution of a man named Aaron Gunches, Arizona’s first since 2022. During his time on death row, he begged for death and was ultimately granted what is likely more appropriately described as an emotionless state-assisted suicide. This experience has profoundly impacted me, leading to deep reflection on the nature of death, humanity, and the role we play in our final moments. When someone is in the end stages of life, we talk about hospice care, comfort, care, easing suffering and humane death. We strive for a “good death” — a peaceful transition. I’ve seen good ones, and I’ve seen bad, unplanned ones.

Execution date set for prisoner transferred to Oklahoma to face death penalty

An inmate who was transferred to Oklahoma last month to face the death penalty now has an execution date. George John Hanson, also known as John Fitzgerald Hanson, is scheduled to die on June 12 for the 1999 murder of 77-year-old Mary Bowles. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday set the execution date. The state’s Pardon and Parole Board has a tentative date of May 7 for Hanson’s clemency hearing, executive director Tom Bates said.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog