Texas is scheduled to execute a man on Wednesday for the 2005 shooting deaths of three people during a botched robbery in a small South Texas town, just one week after the state put his co-defendant to death for the same crime.
Ker’Sean Olajuwa Ramey, 41, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Wednesday evening at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.
He was convicted of capital murder after a botched robbery ended in the deaths of Samuel Roberts, 24, Tiffani Peacock, 18, and Celso Lopez, 38. The murders took place in Edna, a small South Texas town about 100 miles southwest of Houston.
Ramey was 20 years old at the time of the killings and has spent nearly two decades on death row. His attorneys have sought clemency, raising concerns about his trial attorney’s performance, evidence presented during his trial and the jury selection process.
His execution would come exactly a week after the state of Texas executed 40-year-old LeJames Norman, Ramey’s co-defendant, by lethal injection. Norman was the fifth person executed in Texas this year.
According to court records, Ramey and Norman went to the Edna home on Aug. 24, 2005, believing there was cocaine inside that they could steal. They didn’t find the drugs, and Roberts, Peacock and Lopez were fatally shot with a .22-caliber handgun.
Norman later cooperated with investigators and testified against Ramey during his trial.
Prosecutors presented testimony from several witnesses linking him to the killings, including a former girlfriend who testified that Ramey confessed to his involvement and later asked her to drive him to a dam, where she saw him throw two guns into the water.
Investigators later recovered those guns. However, according to a federal appeals court ruling, no fingerprints, DNA, blood or hair evidence connected Ramey to the crime scene or the weapons.
A jury convicted Ramey of capital murder and sentenced him to death in January 2007.
In the years that followed, Ramey has unsuccessfully challenged his conviction and sentence in state and federal courts. His appeals have included claims that prosecutors discriminated against Black prospective jurors and that his trial attorney failed to adequately investigate the case.
No Black jurors ultimately served on Ramey’s jury. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected his jury discrimination claims in 2009 on direct appeal, finding that prosecutors provided race-neutral explanations for their decisions. A federal appeals court later denied relief on a similar claim.
Ramey also argued that his attorney failed to uncover information that could have been used to challenge prosecution witnesses. A federal appeals court also rejected that claim.
Ramey’s attorneys sought to have his death sentence commuted or his execution delayed, but the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied his clemency petition on Monday, according to his attorney Ronald McIntire. Ramey remains scheduled to die Wednesday evening.
If carried out, Ramey’s execution would be the sixth in Texas this year and the second in one week. Three more executions are scheduled before the end of the year, which, if carried out, would bring the state’s annual total to nine — the most in a single year since 2019.
