Texas executes man for ’09 slayings
HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A Texas inmate convicted of fatally stabbing his estranged wife and drowning her 6-year-old daughter in a bathtub nearly 14 years ago was executed on Tuesday.
Gary Green, 51, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was condemned for the September 2009 deaths of Lovetta Armstead, 32, and her daughter, Jazzmen Montgomery, at their Dallas home. Green’s attorneys did not file any appeals seeking to stop the execution.
A Buddhist spiritual adviser chosen by Green stood beside the death chamber gurney at the inmate’s feet and said a brief prayer. Green then apologized to the victims’ family when asked by the warden if he had a final statement.
“I apologize for all the harm I have caused,” Green said, looking at relatives of his victims who watched through a window close by. “We ate together, we laughed and cried together as a family. I’m sorry I failed you.”
“We were all one and I broke that bond,” he continued. “I’m fixing to go home and y’all are going to be here. I want to make sure you don’t suffer. You have to forgive me and heal and move on. … I’m not the man I used to be.”
Prison technicians had to use a vein in Green’s right arm and a vein on the top of his left hand to insert the IV needles, delaying the injection briefly.
As the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began, Green was thanking prison administrators, chaplains and “all the beautiful human beings at the Polunsky Unit,” the prison that houses Texas’ condemned men.
Then he took several quick breaths, which evolved into snores. After nine snores, all movement ceased. Several of the victims’ relatives hugged and briefly cried.
He was pronounced dead 33 minutes later, at 7:07 p.m.
Ray Montgomery, Jazzmen’s father and one of the witnesses, said recently that he wasn’t cheering for Green’s execution but saw it as the justice system at work.
“It’s justice for the way my daughter was tortured. It’s justice for the way that Lovetta was murdered,” said Montgomery, 43. He and other witnesses did not speak with reporters afterward.
In prior appeals, Green’s attorneys had claimed he was intellectually disabled and had a lifelong history of psychiatric disorders. Those appeals were rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court and lower appeals courts.
The high court has prohibited the death penalty for the intellectually disabled, but not for people with serious mental illness.
Authorities said Green stabbed Armstead more than two dozen times and drowned Jazzmen in the bathtub.
Authorities said Green also intended to kill Armstead’s two other children, then 9-year-old Jerrett and 12-year-old Jerome. Green stabbed Jerrett but both boys survived.
Josh Healy, one of the prosecutors with the Dallas County district attorney’s office that convicted Green, said Green “was an evil guy. It was one of the worst cases I’ve ever been a part of,” said Healy, now a defense attorney in Dallas.
Green’s execution was the first of two scheduled in Texas this week. Arthur Brown Jr. is set to be executed Thursday.