High Court Limits Right to Spiritual Aid at Executions

The California Supreme Court refused Thursday to allow condemned inmates to keep a personal spiritual advisor by their side right up to the moment they are led away to their execution.

The court unanimously upheld a prison rule that requires spiritual advisors to leave the condemned inmate 45 minutes before the execution. Prison officials said the regulation is needed to protect the identities of the execution team.

The rule was not enforced for at least two executions because of a lower court order against it.

An attorney for Robert Lee Massie, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday at San Quentin state prison, said Massie had hoped to have an Episcopal priest with him until shortly before his execution.

The attorney, Frederick Baker, said Massie is a “spiritual man” and values the guidance of his advisor, the Rev. Bruce R. Bramlett.

“I just think he feels it would be a comfort for him going into the last hour to have him there to talk to,” Baker said.

The state high court ruled Thursday in the case of Thomas M. Thompson, who was executed in 1998. An Orange County Superior Court judge had prevented prison authorities from removing Thompson’s spiritual advisor before Thompson entered the execution chamber.

In an opinion written by Justice Joyce Kennard, the court said Thursday the trial judge erred because the regulation was “reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.”

“Many, perhaps most, religions view the last minutes of life as a time when the need for spiritual advice and comfort is particularly compelling,” Kennard wrote in Thompson vs. Department of Corrections. “But prisoners do not enjoy the unrestricted freedom of choosing the time, place and manner of practicing their religions.”

State officials say time without the spiritual advisor is needed to prepare the condemned inmate before he or she is escorted to the execution chamber.

During that time, the execution staff asks the inmate to change into a pair of blue jeans and a blue shirt and attaches a heart monitor to the prisoner.

“If you can imagine, he is being asked to turn his attention away from this world and the people who love him and get himself physically ready to be executed,” said Deputy Atty. Gen. Susan Duncan Lee, who represented the state Department of Corrections in the case.

“Having someone there who does love him and prefers that he live can be very distracting and can make it harder to focus on the execution staff,” she said. “The mood really does change in the last few minutes when he is being asked to cooperate with, in effect, his executioners.”

But Jordan Eth, a San Francisco lawyer who represented Thompson and his spiritual advisor, the Rev. Margaret Harrell, said advisors calm inmates before execution and enhance security.

“The last minutes before death are of extreme spiritual significance,” Eth said.

The state does allow the prison’s chaplain to accompany a condemned inmate until the prisoner leaves his cell for the execution chamber. But Eth said inmates prefer to have personal advisors they trust.

“You can have government-issued pants, you can have government-issued socks,” said Eth, but inmates shouldn’t be required to have “a government-issued spiritual advisor.”

Eth said he found it odd that the state high court upheld a rule to protect the identity of the executioners because a federal judge recently rejected that claim in ruling that witnesses, including the news media, should be permitted to view the entire execution.

That order is now before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeals court has not yet ruled on whether witnesses can watch Massie’s execution in its entirety or whether Massie will be strapped down and have intravenous lines inserted when he is behind closed curtains.