Domineque “Hakim” Ray, 42, was executed in Alabama on Thursday, as originally scheduled, after the US Supreme Court voted five-to-four to allow the execution, denying his request for an imam’s presence in the execution chamber.

ALABAMA: Muslim child-murderer sues prison over refusal to allow Islamic imam into death chamber

AL.com Ray was sentenced to death in 1999 for the killing of Tiffany Harville, 15, who disappeared from her Selma, Alabama, home in July 1995.

His execution comes 20 years after being put on death row, and while he was also serving time for the killings of two teenage boys who were slain the year before Tiffany Harville was fatally stabbed. For the boys’ killings, he was sentenced to life in prison. Ray’s last words were in Arabic.

The U.S. Supreme Court lifted the stay of execution after voting 5-4 in favor of the state. Leftist Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer (below) dissented.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall issued a statement after the execution: “For 20 years, Domineque Ray has successfully eluded execution for the barbaric murder of a 15-year-old Selma girl. In 1995, Ray brutally deprived young Tiffany Harville of her life, repeatedly stabbing and raping her before leaving her body in a cotton field. Previous court documents said Harville’s throat was also cut .

A jury gave him a death sentence for this heinous crime. A year before, Ray had also taken the lives of two teenage brothers, Reinhard and Earnest Mabins. Tonight, Ray’s long-delayed appointment with justice is finally met.”

Al-Jazeera Attorneys for Ray had argued that Alabama’s execution policy favored Christian inmates because a chaplain is allowed in the room, often kneeling next to the death row prisoner, and praying with the inmate if requested.

Ali Massoud, government affairs coordinator for the Alabama chapter of designated terrorist group CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations), says that “there were other avenues to pursue”. “We maintain that this was religious discrimination because the bottom line is that Christian [death row] inmates are provided with spiritual advisers until the very last moment, and the Muslim inmates are not,” he told Al Jazeera by telephone. (Who cares?)

Spencer Hahn, one of Ray’s Muslim lawyers, said he was appalled that Ray received unequal treatment at his death because he was a member of a religious minority.