Muslim inmate executed alone after imam barred from death chamber during lethal injection

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A Muslim inmate who filed a legal challenge after the state of Alabama refused to allow his religious adviser to be present during his execution has been put to death.

Dominique Ray, 42, was executed by lethal injection on Thursday in Altmore over the 1995 rape and murder of 15-year-old Tiffany Harville.

Ray had argued procedures in Alabama favour Christian inmates because a chaplain employed by the prison remains inside the execution chamber as the death sentence is carried out.

The prisoner had wanted his imam, Yusef Maisonet, present during the lethal injection process.

However, attorneys for the state said only prison employees were allowed to enter the chamber for security reasons.

Mr Maisonet was present for the execution, watching from an adjoining witness room after visiting Ray several times in the past week.

There was no Christian chaplain in the chamber, a concession the state agreed to make.

Strapped to a gurney in the death chamber, Ray was asked by the warden if he had any final words. The inmate said an Islamic statement of his faith in Arabic.

The 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday had stayed the execution over the religious arguments, but the US Supreme Court allowed it to proceed in a five to four decision on Thursday evening.

Justices cited the fact Ray did not raise the challenge until 28 January as a reason for the decision.

However, justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent that she considered the decision to let the execution go forward “profoundly wrong”.

Other states generally allow spiritual advisers to accompany condemned inmates up to the execution chamber but not into it, said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre, which studies capital punishment in the United States.

Mr Durham said he did not know of any other state where the execution protocol called for a Christian chaplain to be present in the execution chamber.

Spencer Hahn, one of Ray’s attorneys, said he was appalled that Ray received unequal treatment at his death because he was a member of a religious minority.

“He was a son, a father, a brother. He wanted equal treatment in his last moments,” Mr Hahn wrote in a statement.

Ray was convicted of Tiffany Harville’s murder in 1999 after another man, Marcus Owden, confessed to his role in the crime and implicated Ray.

Owden told police they had picked the girl up for a night out on the town and then raped her, before Ray cut her throat.

Owden pleaded guilty to murder, testified against Ray and is serving a life sentence without parole.

A jury recommended the death penalty for Ray by an 11 to one vote.

Additional reporting by AP