Ramiro Gonzales was not a good person 23 years ago—even the lawyers fighting for his life acknowledge that. On January 15, 2001, Gonzales, who was 18, kidnapped, raped, and murdered Bridget Townsend in rural Medina County, outside San Antonio. He also kidnapped and raped another woman—a crime for which he pleaded guilty. Life had been unkind to him, though life is unkind to many who don’t commit heinous acts. His mother was a drug addict; he didn’t know his father; he had been sexually abused. He grew accustomed to a life of violence. At Gonzales’s 2006 trial, forensic psychiatrist Edward Gripon testified that the inmate was a future danger to society, and he was sentenced to death.By then, Gonzales had met an insistent “country boy…
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