Oscar Smith, left, sentenced to death in the state of Tennessee. Right Carl Buntion, executed in Texas on Thursday 21 April. HANDOUT / AFP
At 6:24 p.m. local time, the 70-year-old received a lethal injection in the Huntsville, Texas prison. He was pronounced dead at 6:39 p.m., according to a Texas Corrections Service document.
“I feel sorry for what I did,” said Carl Buntion in his final words. “I’m ready to go. Outside the Texas jail, some protesters shouted: ‘Execution is not the solution’, while dozens of people gathered to support them on the contrary, a correspondent for Agence France-Press (AFP) said on the spot The victim’s family, a police officer, was also in attendance.Carl Buntion’s attorneys had said they had appealed to the United States Supreme Court, to no avail.
No indulgence
Carl Buntion’s defense attorneys no longer tried to prove his innocence. But in Texas, a large state in the Conservative South, the state with the most executions in the United States, a person can only be sentenced to death if a jury decides they pose a future danger to others. But Carl Buntion was 78 years old and suffered from osteoarthritis, dizziness, hepatitis and cirrhosis. He “couldn’t be dangerous anymore,” his attorneys argued in an appeal to the Texas Pardons and Parole Board. Without success.
It was June 1990 when Carl Buntion shot and killed police officer James Irby during an intervention for a minor traffic violation in Houston. The Texan, who was raised by an alcoholic and abusive father, had previously been convicted thirteen times and was on probation for sexually assaulting a child.
Sentenced to the death penalty, he had seen that sentence overturned in 2009 by the Texas Supreme Court, which felt the jury could not adequately hear the defense. But in 2012 he was again sentenced to death. Carl Buntion had been isolated in his cell 24 hours a day for twenty years. In that regard, the US Supreme Court refused to overturn his conviction in 2021, but progressive Justice Stephen Breyer had estimated that the length of his detention “challenged the constitutionality of the death penalty.”
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In Texas, the execution of Carl Buntion should have been sentenced to 27. After a controversial trial, it is supported by many elected Democrats and Republicans, as well as by Reality star Kim Kardashianwhich helped publicize what his defenders call a miscarriage of justice.
Tennessee failed to execute Oscar Smith Thursday
in tennessee, That’s what Governor Bill Lee said on 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 error in the preparation of the lethal injection”, allowing a “provisional pardon” to settle the matter. Oscar Smith was convicted of the 1989 murder of his estranged wife and their two sons.
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However, the death row inmate has multiplied appeals since 1990, the year he was sentenced, until earlier this week. “After a thorough review of Oscar Smith’s clemency petition and a thorough review of the case, the Tennessee State’s judgment will stand and I will not intervene,” Gov. Bill Lee said Tuesday.
A decision that Mr Smith’s lawyer then considered “extremely disappointing”. The latter “has maintained his innocence for more than thirty years,” Amy Harwell told CNN, who claims new DNA analysis techniques on the murder weapon prove his denial.