An American man sentenced to death for the murder of a woman in 2001 is awaiting execution on Wednesday in the southern state of Texas.
Ramiro Gonzales, 41, was sentenced to death in 2006 for the rape and murder of Bridget Townsend, when both were 18 years old.
He is to be executed in the evening by lethal injection.
If this execution takes place, it will be the second since the beginning of the year in Texas and the eighth in the United States, in addition to the one cancelled in extremis on February 28 in Idaho (northwest), due to the inability to administer the lethal solution to the condemned man within the legal time limit.
Ramiro Gonzales kidnapped, raped and then fatally shot Bridget Townsend, the girlfriend of his drug supplier, after finding her in January 2001 at the home of the latter, who was away.
The case was not solved until 18 months later, when Ramiro Gonzales, incarcerated after pleading guilty to raping another woman, confessed to the murder and led authorities to his victim’s body.
The final appeal of his lawyers before the courts of Texas against his execution having been rejected, they took the matter to the Supreme Court of the United States, which must decide in the coming hours. They argue in particular that in Texas, to pronounce the death penalty, jurors must assess the risks that the condemned person will engage in new acts of violence in the future.
However, the psychiatrist who examined him at the time of his trial, Dr. Edward Gripon, whose testimony was decisive, returned to his initial analysis after meeting him again in 2021 on death row, concluding that he no longer “represented a threat or future danger to society”.
A total of 24 executions were carried out in the United States in 2023, all by lethal injection.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 out of 50 American states. Six others (Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee) observe a moratorium on executions by decision of the governor.
