Death-row inmate who murdered store clerk by stabbing him 29 times after robbing him of $1 files lawsuit demanding that his pastor is allowed to lay his hands on him during lethal injection execution

 A Texas death-row inmate scheduled to be executed on September 8 has sued state prison officials demanding that his pastor be allowed to lay hands on him as he dies from a lethal injection.

John Henry Ramirez, 37, a former Marine and a devout Protestant, has been on death row since 2009 for stabbing Pablo Castro 29 times with a serrated knife in a grizzly murder in Corpus Christi on July 19, 2004.  

For Protestants, the laying of hands is a symbolic act in which a religious leader places their hands on a person to confer a spiritual blessing.  

The legal action - filed on Tuesday - asked a judge to allow Pastor Dana Moore, who has been Ramirez's spiritual advisor since 2016, to be present in the death chamber at his execution and lay his hands on Ramirez as he dies. 

Denying this symbolic religious gesture is a violation of Ramirez's first amendment right, according to the lawsuit.  

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Death-row inmate John Henry Ramirez, pictured here during a 2018 prison interview with the BBC, filed a lawsuit ahead of his September 8 lethal injection execution claiming prison officials are denying his first amendment rights by not allowing his spiritual advisor to lay his hands on Ramirez as he dies

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Store clerk Pablo Castro (pictured) was 45 when he was murdered by Ramirez in 2004

Ramirez has already had two stays of execution - once in 2017 so he could get a new attorney and again last September because of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Ramirez joined the Marines to escape an abusive father and the gang activity in his Texas neighborhood, he told the BBC in a 2018 interview

The latest lawsuit cites a 2018 US Supreme Court order that stayed Patrick Murphy's execution unless the inmate's Buddhist spiritual advisor was allowed to accompany Murphy in the Texas execution chamber. 

Murphy, who was one of the 'Texas 7' gang of escaped inmates convicted of killing a suburban Dallas police officer, has not received a new execution date.

Officials of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which operates the Texas state prison system, had no comment, said a department spokesman. 

Ramirez was condemned to death for the brutal, drug-fueled 2004 murder of Castro, a 45-year-old convenience store clerk.

Ramirez stabbed him 29 times during a robbery that netted him and his two codefendants $1.25, according to court documents.  

In a 2018 BBC interview from prison, Ramirez said he, Angela Rodriguez and Christina Chavez were smoking weed, taking cocaine, prescription pills and drinking  vodka that night. 

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Ramirez is pictured here during his trial, where he was convicted by a jury after less than an hour of deliberations

He told BBC that Rodriguez was fighting with a man, and he got involved in the altercation to try to separate them.  

Crime scene photo of Pablo Castro's brutal murder

'I had stabbed him in the neck,' Ramirez said. 'There was like real aggressive gurgling sound. That's what kind of snapped me out of it, and I saw how hurt he was and he was bleeding everywhere. I was just like, "Oh man. I went too far."'

Growing up, Ramirez said he had an abusive father who stabbed his mother multiple times when he was younger. He said in the BBC interview that he was surrounded by gang activity, so he joined the Marines.   

Ramirez claimed that during his drug-fueled blackout, the military training took over. 

'They teach you to kill a person in the fastest way possible. They teach you kill shot. That's what we call it, which is a lot of places I ended up hitting Pablo,' Ramirez said. 

'I hit him in the heart. I hit him in the neck. I hit him in the groin. I hit him in the lung.'

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT    

After the murder, he fled to Mexico and was on the run for four years until he was arrested at the Texas-Mexico border. He was convicted in 2009. 

A juror told BBC in 2018 it took less than an hour to convict. 

'If you're sentenced to death in Texas, you're pretty set that you're going to die,' Ramirez told BBC.