HUNTSVILLE, TEXAS (AP) – A Texas inmate convicted of fatally stabbing his estranged wife and drowning her six-year-old daughter in a bathtub nearly 14 years ago was executed on Tuesday.
Gary Green (AP, pic below), 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.
A Buddhist spiritual adviser chosen by Green stood beside the death chamber gurney at the inmate’s feet and said a brief prayer. Green apologised profusely when asked by the warden if he had a final statement.
“I apologise for all the harm I have caused you and your family,” 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.”
He said he took “two people that we all loved, and I had to live that while I was here”.
“I ask that you forgive me, not for me but for y’all. 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.”
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.
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 7.07pm.
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.
