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This Doctor Helped Send Ramiro Gonzales to Death Row. Now He's Changed His Mind.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/07/11/this-doctor-helped-send-ramiro-gonzales-to-death-row-now-he-s-changed-his-mindLast September, a psychiatrist named Edward Gripon traveled to Texas’ death row to meet a man he helped put there. He had testified at the 2006 trial of Ramiro Gonzales, who was facing a death sentence for kidnapping, raping and killing Bridget Townsend when they both were 18 years old.
“This is a man who has demonstrated a tendency to want to control, to manipulate, and to take advantage of certain other individuals,” Gripon told the jury at the time, predicting that Gonzales would pose a risk of harming more people.
Now, Gripon sat before a man in his late 30s who seemed remorseful and introspective — and realized his prediction had turned out wrong. “Psychopaths will tell you it’s someone else’s fault,” Gripon told The Marshall Project. “Ramiro doesn’t try to lie his way out … If this man’s sentence was changed to life without parole, I don’t think he’d be a problem.”
Gripon’s turnaround is at the center of legal efforts to stop Gonzales’s execution, which is scheduled for Wednesday. But it also throws into question something much larger: the legal foundation of Texas’ death penalty system, which is unique in relying on predictions of defendants’ future behavior.
In other states, judges assess risk with algorithms, deciding who to keep in jail before trial or what sentences to hand down. Some police try to guess where crimes will happen next. But only Texas requires that jurors in death penalty cases try to predict the future by deciding “whether there is a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society.”
“This is a man who has demonstrated a tendency to want to control, to manipulate, and to take advantage of certain other individuals,” Gripon told the jury at the time, predicting that Gonzales would pose a risk of harming more people.
Now, Gripon sat before a man in his late 30s who seemed remorseful and introspective — and realized his prediction had turned out wrong. “Psychopaths will tell you it’s someone else’s fault,” Gripon told The Marshall Project. “Ramiro doesn’t try to lie his way out … If this man’s sentence was changed to life without parole, I don’t think he’d be a problem.”
Gripon’s turnaround is at the center of legal efforts to stop Gonzales’s execution, which is scheduled for Wednesday. But it also throws into question something much larger: the legal foundation of Texas’ death penalty system, which is unique in relying on predictions of defendants’ future behavior.
In other states, judges assess risk with algorithms, deciding who to keep in jail before trial or what sentences to hand down. Some police try to guess where crimes will happen next. But only Texas requires that jurors in death penalty cases try to predict the future by deciding “whether there is a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society.”
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