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TEXAS EXECUTED ITS oldest death row inmate yesterday, a 78-year-old man convicted of killing a policeman more than 30 years ago during a routine traffic stop.
Lawyers for Carl Buntion had filed a final appeal to the US Supreme Court seeking a stay, but it was rejected. He was executed by lethal injection and pronounced dead at 6:39 pm local time (12.39 am Irish time), according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
A second US state, Tennessee, also planned to execute another inmate, Oscar Franklin Smith, 72, by lethal injection for killing his estranged wife and her two teenage sons in 1989.
But Governor Bill Lee tweeted that Smith had been granted a temporary stay due to “an oversight in preparation for lethal injection.” Lee said more details would be released when available.
Buntion was the oldest man on death row in Texas, the conservative southern state which puts more prisoners to death than any other American state.
In June 1990, he shot and killed Houston police officer James Irby during a routine traffic stop.
At that point he already had a long criminal record and was out on parole after a conviction for sexually assaulting a minor.
In his final words at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, released by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Buntion said he wanted Irby’s family to know one thing: “I do have remorse for what I did.”
He said he prayed that the family gets closure “for me killing their father.”
“I am ready to go,” he added.
Buntion was killed with a lethal dose of pentobarbital and died 13 minutes after it was administered, the state’s Department of Criminal Justice said.
A spiritual advisor was allowed to touch him and pray during the execution, the department added.
Some demonstrators in front of the prison shouted “execution is not the solution.”
Irby’s family, as well as dozens of bikers — some of whom had been motorcycle cop colleagues of the victim — also gathered in support.
“I’m sorry that someone died but I didn’t think of him as a person, I just thought of him as a thing, as a cancer on the face of my family,” Irby’s widow, Maura Irby, said during a press conference after the execution.
Buntion’s lawyers had argued that executing him now, so many years after his crime, would constitute “cruel and unusual punishment,” which is banned under the US constitution.
Buntion, they said, posed no danger to anyone and suffered from multiple ailments including arthritis, vertigo, hepatitis, sciatic nerve pain and cirrhosis.
“Mr. Buntion is a frail, elderly man,” his lawyers said in a petition to the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole, “and will not be a threat to anyone in prison if his sentence is reduced to a lesser penalty.”
Buntion had also been in solitary confinement for the past 20 years, restricted to his cell for 23 hours a day.
Buntion was first sentenced to death in 1991. The sentence was vacated in 2009 by the state’s highest court, but three years later another jury reinstated it.
Last year the US Supreme Court declined to issue a stay of execution for Buntion.
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20 years in solitary confinement and confined to your cell 23 hours a day – completely barbaric I and 15 minutes to die
by lethal injection- again barbaric !
@Barbara Coleman: shooting death a police officer on a traffic stop and sexually abusing a minor, that’s barbaric
@Barbara Coleman: just think of the lives it saved keeping him there. Wish we could have done the same with that famous Irish crim / serial kilerr. that only served 10 years of a 15 year sentence.
@Barbara Coleman: don’t really agree with the death penalty but not too concerned about him spending years in solitary confinement. He murdered someone and it’s not supposed to be a holiday camp. Maybe if this happened here, it might act as some kind of deterrent. If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.
@Garreth mc mahon: All of the acts are barbaric. The point being one of them is state sponsored barbarism administered to shown how wrong barbarism is. Its a bit of a contradiction in terms, apart from that it’s an easy way out for animals like that.
@Colleen:if the death penalty acted as a deterrent then the US wouldn’t have such a high rate of violent death and nor would it have the highest rate of incarceration in the entire world.
@Derek Moran: incarceration without solitary confinement would have had the same outcome for society.
@EillieEs: You are put in solitary confinement for a reason, either you are a danger to other inmates/staff or for your own protection. Remember, this was not a nice guy, that is a fact, you think the day he got locked up he became a complete pacifist?
@Alan Wright: Texas keeps all death-row prisoners in solitary confinement.
@Alan Wright: 20 years come on, most corrupt police force, its nothing to do with protecting one of their own. I DON’T CONDONE his crimes. But how many innocent people have been out to death in the states. How many convictions over turned years later, esp against black people. Maybe if they dealth with gun laws, they might not have a need for death penalty. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Great job fair play to the authorities, he was on death row for years then they carried out the rule of court executed him, he had it coming unlike his victim who was just doing his job.
Why do so many forget that there is a victim and a family involved here, when they decide that this is wrong and break out the hankies
Capital punishment is WRONG.
@sean o’dhubhghaill: It does not matter what you are I think. Texas has that law in place for a reason so its up to them to change it. I notice how there is no mention of the US President who is apparently against the death penalty. If they wanted to grant him clemency they could have but he was rejected by the parole board.
@Maurice O Neill: Why does what I am have ANY bearing on this?
@sean o’dhubhghaill: Not for people who abuse children it’s not. They should ALL meet the same fate.
Imagine for one minute if President Trump was still in office. The Irish media would be all over this and would really be laying into him today. But yet not a peep from any of the Major news outlets here about this. I suppose they have a friend in the White House now so it wouldn’t be seen as conforming to upset the current administration.
@Maurice O Neill: you’ve mentioned the Presidency twice. I don’t get what you mean, what has the President got to do with this?
@Maurice O Neill: awww the bub bub bub, you okay hun?
@Maurice O Neill: former president and he (still) deserves all the criticism been thrown at him. A completely awful human being.
@Maurice O Neill: jeez that’s some hard on for trump you have.
@Maurice O Neill: not a peep from any major Irish news outlet? Wow that is absolutely untrue, it’s reported in everything from RTE to the Irish Independent to the Mirror and you’re commenting on an article on it here on the Journal. Why lie about something so easily debunked? It just makes you look untrustworthy
@Maurice O Neill: It’s not major news.
Nothing is more evil than a legally sanctioned killing of this kind.
@Eamonn O’Hanrahan: not sure the victims of these perpetrators or their families would agree.
@Eamonn O’Hanrahan: Nothing? Man, your sense of perception of what “evil” is, is very very wrong.
@Eamonn O’Hanrahan: So in your opinion the people who gave carried out the legally sanctioned injection are more evil than a man who sexually assaulted a minor and killed a police offer? Seriously?
The sentence is correct, but the years of waiting for the sentence to be carried out is Barbaric
@Geoff Bateman: almost as barbaric as the poor innocent child having to live their entire life with the knowledge that they had been sexually abused by a monster.
Monsters deserved to d i e. Slowly.
I’m always torn by this. My head tells me it’s wrong, but my heart always pipes up as to why tax payers should contribute to the upkeep of these people in prison. Plus an eye for an eye and all that. Grateful I don’t actually have to make the decision.
@Anna Carr: an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind
@EillieEs: no it doesn’t, it leaves everyone with one eye
I disagree with capital punishment because I think the prisoners should be forced to serve the full duration of their sentences.
Hardly breaking news, 78 year old dies
Two wrongs don’t make a right. Nobody has the right to kill another person. The USA’s correctional system isn’t working.
The only cruel part of this was making him wait twenty years. He should have been hanged after one tril and one appeal.
@Paul Flynn: I’m sure there are quite a number of people who were acquitted years later with the dawning of new forensic technology who would disagree with you………
Barbaric. Utterly barbaric. This is murder.
@Conor Furlong: Where is your condemnation for the vile crimínal that put himself in this position for murdèring and innocent cop and abuse of a child. Your concern for criminals really shows your character. You could’ve condemned both in your post, but sided with the evil criminal.
Uff. What a way to go . 20 years solitary confinement is a death sentence in itself.
@Marty Quish: Its not. He didn’t die in his cell.
@Alan Wright: aren’t you a bright one .
They would have been better off killing him 20 years ago, think of all that TAX payer’s money they would have saved. After 20 years locked away from everyone, and being old, death would be a doddle. Saying I’m ready to go, rather than begging for forgiveness, takes the good out of it for his family.
@Declan Carr: What you say I’d true, but remember, in the U.S. prisons are a money making racket for private enterprise!
Given that his health and medical conditions were going to end him soon anyway I think it was more a case of execution by euthanasia
Justifying one murder by committing another
The United States and it’s people must be very proud to be able to keep someone in solitary confinement for 20 years and then execute an old age pensioner. Torture followed by execution. How can they be allowed to lecture the rest of the world? It is a very sick society but unfortunately they are not even aware of it.
And Trump walks around free…..
Any Trump walks around free….and will probably be elected president again.
America is deeply lost.
Why after 30 years do this?
@Barbara Coleman if he was in general population he would been a target for attack.
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