Raymond Riles

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Raymond George Riles (born June 1, 1950) is an American convicted murderer who was on death row in Texas from 1976 until he was resentenced to life imprisonment in June 2021. At the time of his resentencing, Riles had been on death row longer than anyone else in the United States. He was convicted of the December 1974 capital murder of John Henry, a Houston used car salesman. Riles was ruled competent to stand trial in the 1970s, but while on death row he was repeatedly found to be too mentally ill to execute. Riles's initial capital conviction was reversed on appeal because prosecutors improperly introduced evidence of a separate crime during that trial. In 1978, Riles was convicted again and resentenced to the death penalty. In 1985, he was badly burned when he set his prison cell on fire in a suicide attempt. A 1986 scheduled execution was stayed because of concerns over whether the death penalty was disproportionately applied to black perpetrators with white victims. In 2008, an assistant...

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