It was at 6:24 p.m. local time, in the prison of Huntsville, Texas, that the septuagenarian received a lethal injection. He was pronounced dead at 6:39 p.m., according to a Texas Corrections Service document.
“I feel remorse for what I did”said Carl Buntion in his last words. “I’m ready to go. » In front of the Texas prison, some demonstrators shouted: “Execution is not the solution”, while dozens of people had gathered to, on the contrary, support her, noted a correspondent from Agence France-Presse (AFP) on the spot. The family of the victim, a policeman, was also present. Carl Buntion’s lawyers had explained that they had filed a final appeal with the United States Supreme Court, without success.
No leniency
Carl Buntion’s defenders no longer sought to prove his innocence. But in Texas, a large state in the conservative South – the most executed in the United States – a person can only be sentenced to death if a jury judges that he represents a future danger to others. However, Carl Buntion was 78 years old and suffered, among other things, from osteoarthritis, vertigo, hepatitis and cirrhosis. He could not “no longer be dangerous”, had argued his lawyers in an appeal to the Texas Pardons and Parole Board. Without success.
It was in June 1990, during an intervention for a trivial traffic violation in Houston, that Carl Buntion shot and killed police officer James Irby. Raised by an alcoholic and violent father, the Texan had already been convicted thirteen times and was on parole for a sexual assault on a child.
Sentenced to the death penalty, he had seen this verdict overturned in 2009 by the highest Texas court, which considered that the defense had not been able to be properly heard by the jurors. But in 2012, he was again sentenced to death. Carl Buntion had been isolated in his cell twenty-three hours a day for twenty years. In this context, the American Supreme Court had refused to reverse his conviction in 2021, but the progressive judge Stephen Breyer had estimated that the duration of his confinement put back “in question the constitutionality of the death penalty”.
In Texas, the execution of Carl Buntion should be followed by that of Melissa Lucio, accused of killing her 2-year-old daughter in 2007, which is scheduled for April 27. Sentenced after a controversial trial, she is supported by many elected Democrats and Republicans, as well as by reality TV star Kim Kardashianwhich helped publicize what its defenders call a miscarriage of justice.
Tennessee was unable to execute Oscar Smith on Thursday
In Tennessee, Governor Bill Lee said Thursday afternoon that the execution of Oscar Smith, also in his seventies (72 years old), would not take place in the evening, “due to an oversight in the preparation of the lethal injection”granting a “temporary reprieve” time to settle the matter. Oscar Smith was convicted of the 1989 murder of his estranged wife and her two sons.
The death row inmate has however multiplied the appeals since 1990, the year of his conviction, until the beginning of the week. “After careful consideration of Oscar Smith’s clemency application and careful review of the case, the sentence from the State of Tennessee will stand and I will not interfere”Republican Governor Bill Lee announced on Tuesday.
A decision then judged “extremely disappointing” for Mr. Smith’s lawyer. This last “claims his innocence for more than thirty years”told CNN Amy Harwell, who claims that new DNA analysis techniques on the murder weapon prove her denials.
