Supreme Courts stays Texas execution over inmate's request for pastor's touch as he's being put to death
CBSN
Huntsville, Texas — A Texas death row inmate won a reprieve from execution Wednesday evening for killing a convenience store worker during a 2004 robbery that garnered $1.25, after claiming the state was violating his religious freedom by not letting his pastor lay hands on him at the time of his lethal injection.
The U.S. Supreme Court blocked John Henry Ramirez's execution about three hours after he could have been executed. He is condemned for fatally stabbing 46-year-old Pablo Castro, who worked at the Corpus Christi convenience store. Ramirez was in a small holding cell a few feet from the Texas death chamber at the Huntsville Unit prison when he was told of the reprieve by Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark.Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.