He’s Too Mentally Ill To Execute. Why Is He Still On Death Row After 45 Years? Patch 2/18/2021 2021-02-04 Raymond Riles arrived on Texas’s death row in 1976, the year President Gerald Ford lost his reelection bid and the first “Rocky” movie debuted in theaters. Riles had been sentenced to death in Houston for killing a used car salesman named John Henry. Forty-five years and eight presidents later, Riles remains there, having survived three cancelled execution dates to become the longest serving death row prisoner in the state—and likely in the nation. He lives in near-total solitary confinement. Like many longtime death row prisoners, experts have repeatedly deemed him to be delusional and “grossly psychotic.” Sometimes he describes himself as God or “King Moto-Cherry Velt-Love.” Other times he worries that he will be sacrificed to Satan by his demonic captors. He once set himself on fire.