Many death row stories center on wrongly convicted people, but that’s not the case with the Oscar-nominated short documentary, I Am Ready, Warden (streaming on Paramount+). It follows John Henry Ramirez in the days before he was executed in Texas for stabbing a convenience store worker 29 times in 2004. While behind bars, Ramirez acknowledged he was guilty of murder. The film also follows the victim’s son and Ramirez’s own son.
Keri Blakinger, a producer for the documentary, first reported on Ramirez for The LA Times. She tells KCRW that she had covered death row extensively and was at a Texas prison interviewing someone else, when Ramirez asked if she would witness his execution (the request was relayed to her from an official). Blakinger had heard of him before, then met him a week before one of his scheduled execution dates.
Mundhra, director of I Am Ready, Warden, recalls that when she met Ramirez for the first time, he was clear-headed about his case and the moral questions surrounding it. There was no excuse for his crime, he acknowledged.
“All that he wanted was to … convey that he understood the gravity of what he did. He wasn't a cold hearted killer who took a life callously and never thought about it again, or was only consumed by questions of his own path and how he could get off death row, or how he could maneuver a legal system or whatnot. He understood the gravity of what he did, and he was deeply, deeply remorseful,” recalls Mundhra.
Blakinger points out that death row in Texas is one of the most restrictive in the country, where prisoners spend almost their entire days in solitary confinement. She says at that point, they had phone access for 15 minutes per day, and visitors saw them through plexiglass.
“[Ramirez’s] view of the afterlife and his feelings about what he saw as a possible afterlife — changed over the time that I'd known him. … At the outset, he'd had an ornate view of what his afterlife would look like, and it seemed to bring him a lot of hope and joy,” Blakinger says. “And by the summer before his execution, he was telling me that he hoped that he was wrong, and that there was not an afterlife, and that there was just blackness.”
I Am Ready, Warden also focuses on Aaron Castro, the son of the victim, Pablo Castro. Mundhra says that during her first phone call with the younger Castro, which lasted three to four hours, she could feel his inner conflict.
“He's been driven by this need for justice, and this need for closure for his entire adult life. But countering that was this really forgiving and compassionate heart. Aaron is the type of person where the last thing he would want on his conscience is another life lost. … He's also a man of faith, and really ultimately felt that … it should be in God's hands to decide John's fate.”
Mundhra also points out, “He was promised something by the legal system. And the truth of the matter is … every time John was in the news, every time there was another date of execution or another stay of execution, this whole trauma was ripped open anew for Aaron.”
She says that ultimately, Aaron Castro didn’t receive the closure he expected. “Even if you can see and empathize with both sides, the fact of the matter is, at least in this particular case, the closure that was promised and the justice that was promised didn't really manifest.”
When Aaron Castro got news that Ramirez was executed, he had an emotional and physical reaction. In the documentary, he says, “A life was taken too soon, just as it was when I was 14 years old. And I'm not celebrating, this isn't a moment to celebrate.”
“That was one of the toughest scenes I've ever put on camera,” Mundhra admits.
Blakinger points out that people’s initial response to this kind of news can differ from how they respond years later. She says she’s still Facebook friends with some people she met through reporting, and it’s interesting to see how their posts have changed. “It goes from being this thing that was their entire personality almost, and would take up their whole lives, to being something that they don't post about anymore. And that makes me happy for them, and it makes me think that maybe this, whether or not this was closure, some of them do at least seem to move on.”
I Am Ready, Warden also spotlights Ramirez’s son, Izzy, who was 16 when his dad called him right before the execution. John Ramirez said, “I don't think if I would have raised you … I don't think you would have grew up to be who you are right now. Because you would have been influenced by me, so I am grateful for that. I'm happy that your mom allowed you to still be in my life and everything. And now here we are.”
Mundhra says at the time, Izzy Ramirez was trying to gain control over his emotions and project the air of acceptance and being fine. “His dad has been on death row for most of his life, since he was 2 years old. … He's sort of, I think in some ways, been raised to anticipate this. So I think, if anything, probably his emotional reaction and that last phone call when he talks to John, that single tear that crushed … everyone that was in the room, I think that was probably more surprising than anything.”