Muslim Death Rites and Alabama Death-Row Protocol

Earlier this year in February, The Supreme court approved the execution of a Muslim man, Domineque Ray in the absence of a requested appropriate religious adviser. It was determined that allowing entrance to the execution chamber to an outside spiritual adviser, who was not a trained prison employee, would be a security threat to execution protocol. In response to Ray’s request, the Alabama Department of Correction (ADOC) amended their protocol to no longer permit any spiritual adviser whatsoever in the execution chamber. According to Ray’s attorney, days before his scheduled execution date, he learned that his imam would not be given access to the execution chamber and immediately filed emergency-stay paperwork.  A unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta ruled in Ray’s favor and stayed the execution, saying Mr. Ray had presented “a powerful Establishment Clause claim.” Following this, ADOC’s attorneys filed an emergency application asking the Supreme Court to vacate the stay of the execution. They insisted that “The state should be allowed to proceed with the serious and solemn responsibility of conducting executions in an orderly and secure fashion.” In response to this application, Ray’s lawyers urged the justices to expedite the litigation of Ray’s appeal. However, in a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court voted to vacate the stay on account of the fact that Ray’s appeal on religious grounds had come too late.

The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States clearly states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.  The very purpose of this free exercise and establishment clause is to avoid preferential or discriminatory treatment of any particular religious denomination. This forms the backbone of American citizens’ right to religious liberty. Decisions like this call to question the government’s commitment to protecting that liberty.  The state of Alabama’s laws and policies regulating execution protocol were clearly hostile towards Non-Christian religions. As Justice Kagan said, giving the dissenters opinion, it basically gave prisoners the option of having Christian death rites or none whatsoever. The Supreme Court’s subsequent decision to permit the state to carry out Ray’s execution in this manner was a violation of his right to freedom of religious exercise according to the First Amendment to the Constitution. The Court’s support of the practice of this protocol in itself can be regarded as establishment or preference of one religion over others in gross violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The court’s only justification in approving this gross infraction on his religious freedom was the fact that he had “waited too long” to speak up about it. Even this fact was later rebutted by Justice Kagan as she reminded the court that Ray had only found out that his Imam would not actually be let into the room from a prison guard 5 days before he ended up filing his paperwork. Can the government truly claim to be religiously impartial when it approves and permits such blatantly religiously discriminatory practices?

I think that this case is just another in a long list of instances where the US government has pointedly met the Muslim community with hostility. Just last term the Supreme court approved the Trump administration’s travel ban which targeted immigrants from certain Muslim-majority countries. In Trump v Hawaii 2018, the Court in a 5-4 decision, miraculously held that the Proclamation did not in fact violate the Establishment Clause. I am not sure how this law that sought to pointedly refuse entry to people who just happened to be of a particular religious denomination was seen as anything but an endorsement or establishment of their religious opposition. Time and time again the US Supreme Court seems to be becoming less and less religiously impartial with their rulings to the point where it begs to question whether the separation between church and state truly exists. I think if the US government wants to stay true to its claim to religious plurality and impartiality, decisions like the one made in Ray’s case cannot continue to happen. The court cannot continue to support the religious denigration of its citizens, particularly with regards to something as serious and absolute and death rites.