CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — $1.25.
That's how much money authorities said John Henry Ramirez got away with when he stabbed store clerk Pablo Castro 29 times during a robbery in 2004, killing him. Ramirez was convicted and sentenced to death in 2008.
He is now set to die by lethal injection Wednesday night at a Texas prison.
Several appeals by Ramirez pushed back his execution date three times over the years. The most recent reprieve was in 2021 when the U.S. Supreme Court intervened.
Ramirez received a last-minute stay of execution last September, when the U.S. Supreme Court halted his execution with hours to spare. The point of legal contention then was religious freedom. In an 8-to-1 ruling in March, the court directed Texas to allow Ramirez’s Baptist pastor to lay hands on him and pray with him in the death chamber, as the inmate had requested.
In April, Nueces County District Attorney Mark Gonzalez filed a motion to have Ramirez's execution withdrawn. In the motion, Gonzalez called the death penalty "unethical" and that it should not be imposed.
That motion was denied.
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3NEWS last spoke with Ramirez in 2017, before a previously scheduled execution, to ask him how he felt about his death.
"I've pictured myself strapped to that gurney and I picture like what I'm gonna say to his family and what I'm gonna say to my family," Ramirez said. "And then the warden starts the drug administration and then you start, you start feeling it and it starts taking effect and every time I do that I get 'aww man like anxious my heart starts racing.'"
Two women were with Ramirez the night of the crime. Angela Rodriguez is currently serving a 99-year prison sentence for murder and Christina Chaves is serving 25 years for aggravated robbery.
A request by Ramirez to have Pastor Dana Moore of Corpus Christi's Second Baptist Church lay his hands on him while he dies was previously denied by Texas authorities, leading to the U.S. Supreme Court case.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.