Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Man, 78, executed for ’90 killing of Texas officer
HUNTSVILLE, Texas — Texas’ oldest death row inmate was executed Thursday for killing a Houston police officer during a traffic stop nearly 32 years ago.
Carl Wayne Buntion, 78, was executed at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was condemned for the June 1990 fatal shooting of Houston police officer James Irby, a member of the force for almost 20 years.
“I wanted the Irby family to know one thing: I do have remorse for what I did,” Buntion said while strapped to the Texas death chamber gurney. “I pray to God that they get the closure for me killing their father and Ms. Irby’s husband.”
Buntion, joined by his spiritual adviser, began praying Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd …” as the lethal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital began. He was pronounced dead at 6:39 p.m., 13 minutes later.
Buntion had been on parole for just six weeks when he shot the 37-year-old Irby. Buntion, who had an extensive criminal record, was a passenger in the car that Irby pulled over.
Leading up to his execution, various state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, had also turned down appeals by Buntion’s lawyers to stop his death sentence. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Tuesday had rejected his clemency request.
Buntion’s attorneys said he was responsible for Irby’s death and “deserved to be punished severely for that crime.”
But they argued his execution was unconstitutional because the jury’s finding he would be a future danger to society — one of the reasons he was given a death sentence — has proved incorrect, and also his execution would serve no legitimate purpose because so much time has passed since his conviction. His attorneys described Buntion as a geriatric inmate who posed no threat as he suffers from arthritis, vertigo and needed a wheelchair.
With his execution, Buntion became the oldest person Texas has put to death since the Supreme Court lifted its ban on capital punishment in 1976. The oldest inmate executed in the U.S. in modern times was Walter Moody Jr., who was 83 years old when he was put to death in Alabama in 2018.
TEMPORARY REPRIEVE
Meanwhile, Tennessee’s governor on Thursday called off what was to have been the state’s first execution since the start of the pandemic, granting a temporary reprieve to the oldest inmate on the state’s death row for what was called an “oversight” in preparations for the lethal injection.
Republican Gov. Bill Lee didn’t elaborate on what exactly forced the surprise 11th- hour stop to the planned execution of Oscar Smith, 72.
“Due to an oversight in preparation for lethal injection, the scheduled execution of Oscar Smith will not move forward tonight. I am granting a temporary reprieve while we address Tennessee Department of Correction protocol,” Lee said. “Further details will be released when they are available.”
Kelley Henry, an attorney with the federal public defender’s office representing Smith, called for an independent entity to investigate, saying no execution should happen until questions are answered about what had occurred.
Henry said the governor did the “right thing” by stopping the execution which would “certainly have been torturous to Mr. Smith.”
Smith was convicted of the 1989 killings of his estranged wife and her two teenage sons. Shortly before the governor intervened, the U. S. Supreme Court had denied a last-hour bid by Smith’s attorneys to block the execution plan.