Muslim execute battle

A MUSLIM prison inmate who argued in a legal challenge that Alabama wouldn’t let his Islamic spiritual adviser be present in the execution chamber was put to death yesterday soon after the highest US court cleared the way.

Dominique Ray, 42, was pronounced dead after a lethal injection at the state prison in Atmore.

Ray had argued Alabama’s execution procedure favoured Christian inmates because a Christian chaplain employed by the prison typically remained in the execution chamber during a lethal injection, but the state would not let his imam be present.

Lawyers for the state said only prison employees were allowed in the chamber for security reasons.

Ray’s imam, Yusef Maisonet, watched the execution from an adjoining witness room. There was no Christian chaplain in the chamber.

A day earlier, the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the execution over the religious arguments, but the Supreme Court cleared the way for it to proceed in a 5-4 evening decision.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the dissenting justices considered the decision to let the execution go forward “profoundly wrong.”

Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which studies capital punishment in the US, did not know of any other state where the execution protocol called for a Christian chaplain to be present in the execution chamber.

Ray was sentenced to death for the 1995 rape and murder of Tiffany Harville, 15, who went missing from her Selma home