Federal death row is housed at a facility in Terre Haute.
(AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)
Two Monroe County ministers are suing federal prison officials for the right to touch people on death row when they pray.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Terre Haute, asks a federal judge to allow the ministers to have physical contact with the men for whom they serve as spiritual advisors. They also want contact during their executions, if they occur.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana is representing lay Episcopalian minister Ross Eiler and Rev. Bill Breeden, an ordained minister in the Unitarian Universalist Church as well as the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
“When I'm dealing with someone who's sick, or in troubled times, or counseling, it's not unusual at all for me to hold their hands. Or, if I'm saying a prayer for them, to lay my hands on them,” Breeden says. “That's the kind of way ministers do things.”
Eiler and Breeden are the recognized spiritual advisors for Jurijus Kadamovas and Chad Fulks, who are both sentenced to death for murder and other crimes. They’re being held with around 40 other men on federal death row in Terre Haute.
According to the lawsuit, the restrictions on death row violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which states the government may burden the exercise of religion only for compelling reasons and in the least restrictive manner.
The lawsuit says preventing contact during prayer or execution imposes a “substantial burden” on religious exercise and “neither furthers a compelling governmental interest nor is the least restrictive alternative to further that interest.”
A U.S. prison bureau spokesperson said Monday that the agency did not comment on pending litigation or matters subject to legal proceedings.
The ACLU of Indiana is also in negotiations with the prison bureau over solitary confinement conditions on federal death row.
In January, the group filed a lawsuit accusing prison officials of imposing conditions so severe they constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
A federal judge has stayed that case to allow the parties time to negotiate.
That lawsuit seeks to give people on federal death row more time outside their cells and the ability to congregate together.
People sentenced to death under the federal system are held in the “Special Confinement Unit” within a larger facility in Terre Haute.
It’s also where the U.S. government carries out federal executions.
The federal government has carried out 16 executions in Terre Haute since the special facility’s construction, including 13 in the final months of the Trump administration.
Breeden was allowed to stand in silence during the execution. But he wasn’t able to touch Johnson or read a statement he prepared.
Prison officials allowed him to touch Johnson’s body and pray over it once the execution ended.
Breeden said Saturday that the experience led to his decision to file the lawsuit.
“I never got to touch him before he was dead … I wanted to hold Corey’s hand,” he says. “It’s imperative that we are able to touch the people we minister to. And it's part of my religious practice and belief that I have to do that.”
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with a man on Texas death row who asked that his spiritual advisor be allowed to pray and touch him during his execution. The court sided with John Ramirez after delaying his and other executions as justices decided the case.
The ruling said state officials must accommodate reasonable requests for spiritual advisors to pray aloud during executions.
State officials argued prayer or physical contact might disrupt the executions.
