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March 7, 2023

Texas completes its fourth execution of 2023

As reported in this AP article, 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."  Here are more details:

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 profusely when asked by the warden if he had a final statement.... 

Instead of inserting the IV needles in each arm, prison technicians had to use a vein in Green’s right arm and a vein on the top of his left hand, delaying the injection briefly for Green, who was listed on prison records as weighing 365 pounds (165 kilograms)....  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 committed the killings after Armstead sought to annul their marriage....  Armstead was stabbed more than two dozen times, and Green drowned Jazzmen in the home’s 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 the boys were incredibly brave. 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. Inmate Arthur Brown Jr. is set to be executed Thursday. Green was the eighth inmate in the U.S. put to death this year.

He was one of six Texas death row inmates participating in a lawsuit seeking to stop the state’s prison system from using what they allege are expired and unsafe execution drugs. Despite a civil court judge in Austin preliminarily agreeing with the claims, four of the Texas inmates including Green have been executed this year.

March 7, 2023 at 09:08 PM | Permalink

Comments

Anyone want to explain why the DP was unjust in this case on these facts?

Posted by: Bill Otis | Mar 8, 2023 12:09:20 AM

Stop making sense Bill.

Posted by: federalist | Mar 8, 2023 8:45:27 AM

federalist --

Ain't it somethin' when a real, live case shows up! The anti-DP crowd heads for the hills (the hills of Cambridge, New Haven and Palo Alto, anyway).

Posted by: Bill Otis | Mar 8, 2023 2:34:10 PM

Yeah, it’s easy to nip at the heels in the abstract. Things change in real life scenarios.

Posted by: TarlsQtr | Mar 8, 2023 4:35:08 PM

I love executions. The sweater I'm knitting is almost done. Keep those heads rolling, so to speak.

Posted by: Madame De Farge | Mar 8, 2023 4:56:42 PM

Madame --

Got anything to say about the sentence in this case on these facts?

Didn't think so.

The best the pro-murder side has to offer is some anonymous halfwit signing on as "Madame De Farge." Got anything that might be mistaken for an argument grounded in the realities of this case?

Posted by: Bill Otis | Mar 8, 2023 5:22:39 PM

"Anyone want to explain why the DP was unjust in this case on these facts?"

Based on the facts given, the DP was just. However, given that police and prosecutors routinely lie under oath, suborn perjury, and use countless other methods of gaining convictions that correlate not at all with actual guilt, I have no reason to believe that the facts stated are anything close to true. So I oppose this, like all other executions, and will continue to do so until 20 years go by in which nobody in the US is falsely convicted of a felony.

Posted by: Keith Lynch | Mar 8, 2023 5:25:05 PM

Keith Lynch --

Only, from what appears in the story, the defendant never even claimed he didn't do it, and the case was reviewed by the judges -- people who are more neutral than you'll ever be -- for more than a decade. The real reason you oppose the death penalty (or anything else prosecutors seek (and juries impose)) is simply reflexive hate.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Mar 8, 2023 8:02:53 PM

Bill Otis, your calling Madame DeFarge a "halfwit" are odd given that she appears to be on your side.

Posted by: anon16 | Mar 8, 2023 11:39:13 PM

anon16 --

"Bill Otis, your calling Madame DeFarge a 'halfwit' are odd given that she appears to be on your side."

1. Did you mean to say, "Bill Otis, your calling Madame DeFarge a 'halfwit' IS odd given that she appears to be on your side."? Noun/verb agreement and all that.

2. The person I called a halfwit was the anonymous commenter posing as Madame De Farge, not the fictional character herself.

3. Got anything to say about this case, or do you want to take a pass on anything resembling a serious exchange?

4. Now that you mention it, I do have people on my side, e.g., George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower and Bill Clinton, all of whom not only supported but used the death penalty. It was also supported by Barack Obama. Not to mention a clear majority of the American people.

Let me guess. You're morally superior to all of them.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Mar 9, 2023 12:41:19 AM

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