SON CAUSES RUCKUS AT EXECUTION.
HUNTSVILLE, TEXAS• Chaos erupted outside Texas’ death chamber when the son of the condemned inmate pounded on the chamber windows, shouted obscenities and threw fists after his father spoke his final words. Billie Wayne Coble, a Vietnam War veteran who killed his estranged wife’s parents and brother and threatened to do the same to her in 1989, told five witnesses he selected to attend his Thursday night execution that he loved them. Coble then nodded as they watched from a witness room, saying: “Take care.” When he finished speaking, his son, grandson and daughter- in- law became emotional, and the men swung and kicked at others in the death chamber witness area. Officers stepped in but said the men continued to resist and were eventually moved to a courtyard, where both were handcuffed and arrested.
“Why are you doing this?” the woman asked. “They just killed his daddy.”
As the men were being subdued outside, a single dose of pentobarbital was injected into Coble. He gasped several times and began snoring as the lethal dose of drug was being administered inside the death chamber at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.
He was pronounced dead 11 minutes later, at 6:24 p.m. His son and grandson, later identified as 45- year- old Gordon Wayne Coble and 21- year- old Dalton Coble, were arrested on charges of resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.
The 70- year- old Billie Wayne Coble was the oldest inmate executed by Texas since the state resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982.
He was convicted nearly three decades ago for the August 1989 shooting deaths of Robert and Zelda Vicha, and their son, Bobby Vicha. The victims were killed at separate homes in Axtell, northeast of Waco.
A prosecutor once described Coble as having “a heart full of scorpions.” On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court turned down Coble’s request to delay his execution. His lawyers had argued Coble’s original trial lawyers were negligent for conceding his guilt by failing to present an insanity defence.
Coble’s lawyer, A. Richard Ellis, told the courts Coble suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from his time as a Marine during the Vietnam War. Ellis argued that Coble was convicted in part because of misleading testimony from two prosecution expert witnesses on whether he would be a future danger. Coble was the third inmate put to death this year in the U.S. and the second in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state.