An American man sentenced to death for the murder of a woman in 2001 was executed Wednesday in the southern US 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.
Executed by lethal injection, he was pronounced dead at 6:50 p.m., according to a statement from Texas authorities.
This is 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 abducted, raped and then shot to death Bridget Townsend, the girlfriend of his drug supplier, after finding her in January 2001 at his home, which he said 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.
His lawyers’ final appeals to the Texas courts and then to the United States Supreme Court were rejected.
They argued 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, reversed his initial analysis after meeting him again in 2021 on death row, concluding that he now “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.
