TX Death Row Inmate Who Wants To Donate Kidney Gets Stay Of Execution

AUSTIN, TX — A Texas appeals court on Monday granted a stay of execution to a death-row inmate who had appealed to state officials to delay his death by lethal injection so he can make a humanitarian living kidney donation to atone for his crimes.

That wasn't what swayed the Austin-based Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, though.

Ramiro Gonzales, 39, had been scheduled to die by lethal injection Wednesday under a sentence imposed after his 2006 conviction in the kidnapping, rape and murder five years earlier of his drug dealer’s girlfriend, Bridget Townsend, 18, in southwest Texas.

The court kicked the case back to the trial court for review after finding prosecutors presented false testimony wrongly claiming Gonzales was likely to commit rape and kill again, a finding needed in Texas capital murder cases, The Associated Press reported.

The appeals court’s order makes no mention of Gonzales’ request to state officials that his execution be delayed so he can donate a kidney, or that he be granted an exception to a state corrections department policy that prohibits inmates from making tissue or organ donations.

Change Of Heart

But Gonzales' request to make a living organ donation to a stranger and other behaviors while in prison figured prominently in a change of heart by psychiatrist Edward Gripon, the prosecution’s expert witness in Gonzales’ trial 16 years ago.

Gripon testified at the time that people who commit sexual assaults have an “extremely high” recidivism rate of about 80 percent — a claim experts reviewing the case were unable to support through credible studies, according to Thea Posel and Raoul Schonemann, Gonzales’ lawyers.

The requirement that jurors in death penalty cases rely on projections of a defendant’s likelihood to re-offend is a quirk of the Texas law. In other states, judges make those decisions, using a variety of algorithms to assess recidivism risk.

Gripon told the Marshall Project he was wrong in his assessment that Gonzales had “demonstrated a tendency to want to control, to manipulate, and to take advantage of certain other individuals.”

“Psychopaths will tell you it’s someone else’s fault,” Gripon told The Marshall Project, a nonprofit digital news organization focusing on issues related to criminal justice. In comparison, “Ramiro doesn’t try to lie his way out,” he said, adding, “If this man’s sentence was changed to life without parole, I don’t think he’d be a problem.”

'Give Back Life'

Gonzales might never have ended up on death row if he hadn't confessed after pleading guilty to kidnapping and raping another woman in 2002, according to the Texas Tribune.

Gonzales’ attorneys previously tried to stop his execution based on his age — 18 — at the time he killed Townsend, who had intervened and attempted to stop him from stealing her boyfriend’s cache of drugs, according to court documents. Supported by multiple studies, the lawyers argued that defendants ages 18-21 shouldn’t receive the death penalty because their brains aren’t yet fully developed.

“In such emerging adults, the parts of the brain that enable impulse control and reasoned judgment remain not yet fully developed,” Gonzales’ lawyers argued, according to the Texas Tribune. “In a very real sense, 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds are not yet the people they will ultimately become.”

Gonzales’ lawyers say adverse childhood experiences shaped his early adulthood. He was abandoned by his teenage mother, sexually abused as a youngster and became addicted to drugs as a 15-year-old after his aunt was killed by a drunk driver, the Tribune report said. Gonzales and his biological father met by chance when they ended up at the same jail.

Even before he was taken to the Huntsville prison where the state carries out its executions, Gonzales had started turning his life around, in part because of counseling in jail but also from watching video testimony from Townsend’s family.

“Hate is such a strong word, it's such a strong emotion. It takes so much internally to hate somebody,” he told The Marshall Project. “This family has this much hate within their hearts because of me. I'm to blame for why they hate.”

Gonzales, who earned the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree from a Bible college while in prison, writes weekly sermons for the prison radio station. He came up with the idea last year to donate a kidney to a stranger, telling the Marshall Project that is “probably one of the closest things” he can do to “give back life” to replace the life he took.

'I Will Go To My Grave Believing'

Michael Zoosman, a former prison chaplain and anti-death penalty activist who had offered spiritual counseling to Gonzales, told the AP he believes Gonzales is sincere in his request.

“There has been no doubt in my mind that Ramiro’s desire to be an altruistic kidney donor is not motivated by a last-minute attempt to stop or delay his execution,” he wrote in a letter to the AP. “I will go to my grave believing in my heart that this is something that Ramiro wants to do to help make his soul right with his God.”

Gonzales’ lawyers said the transplant team at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston determined Gonzales to be an “excellent candidate” for a kidney donation, and also that he has a rare blood type that improves the chances of finding a match for some patients on the transplant waiting list, the AP reported.

The appeals court decision came about two hours after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied the request from Gonzales’ attorneys to either commute his sentence to a lesser penalty or delay his execution for 180 days so he can donate a kidney to stranger. Separately, Gonzales’ lawyers asked Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to grant a 30-day reprieve from execution.

Gonzales’ attorneys have also tried to stop his execution based on his age — 18 — at the time he killed Townsend, who had intervened and attempted to stop him from stealing her boyfriend’s cache of drugs, according to court documents. Among their arguments, supported by multiple, was that defendants ages 18-21 shouldn’t receive the death penalty because their brains aren’t fully developed at that age.

“In such emerging adults, the parts of the brain that enable impulse control and reasoned judgment remain not yet fully developed,” Gonzales’ lawyers argued in another recent appeal, according to the Texas Tribune. “In a very real sense, 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds are not yet the people they will ultimately become.”