Texas Executes Ker’Sean Ramey for 2005 Triple Murder After Final Appeals Rejected

Texas executed Ker’Sean Olajuwa Ramey by lethal injection on Wednesday evening for his role in the 2005 shooting deaths of three people during a botched robbery in the small town of Edna.

He was pronounced dead at 6:34 p.m. at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.

Ramey, 41, was the sixth person executed in Texas this year and the 28th in the United States.

His execution came exactly one week after his co-defendant, LeJames Norman, was put to death for the same crime.

In his final statement, Ramey expressed devotion to God and his family, and thanked fellow death row inmates for their support.

“To the brothers on Texas death row that grew up with me, that poured into me and showed what it means to be a man, because I came in young, and didn’t understand what manhood was … to you brothers … I greatly appreciate you,” he said.

Ramey was 20 years old when he and Norman broke into a neighbor’s home on Aug. 24, 2005, believing there was cocaine inside to steal, according to court records.

They found no drugs and fatally shot Celso Lopez, 38, who was home at the time, and then killed Tiffani Peacock, 18, and Sam Roberts, 24, when they arrived.

Prosecutor Eli Garza described the killings during Ramey’s 2007 trial as an “execution,” according to an archived story in the Victoria Advocate.

Ramey’s conviction rested largely on witness testimony, including from Norman and Ramey’s former girlfriend, since no DNA evidence linked him to the crime scene and a firearm examiner could not determine whether bullets recovered from the victims matched the suspected weapons.

His attorneys had argued for years that he never received a fair trial because of racial bias in jury selection.

Ramey’s jury consisted of 11 White people and one Latino, and at least nine Black jurors were eliminated during the selection process, according to court records.

Prosecutors said they struck one potential Black juror “because of her inconclusive opinions on the death penalty and not her identity as an African-American”.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected those arguments this week, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied a final stay request hours before the execution.

Tabatha Hastings, sister of victim Tiffani Peacock, told USA TODAY she wants her loved one remembered for more than how she died.

“She was a daughter, a sister, a friend, and someone deeply loved,” Hastings said. “Her life mattered before it ever became part of a court case, and it still matters today”.

Ramey was baptized the day before his execution. His friend Sonja Mosley, the only witness he chose, said afterward: “I loved him so much. My soul hurts. My heart hurts.”

She said she intended to continue a ministry Ramey started aimed at preventing other young men from committing crimes.

Three more executions are scheduled in Texas through the end of the year. If carried out, it would be the most executions in the state in a single year this decade.