78-Year-Old Man Executed for Houston Officer's Death --
Buntion's attorneys said he was responsible for Irby's death and"deserved to be punished severely for that crime."
"This delay of three decades undermines the rationale for the death penalty ... Whatever deterrent effect there is diminished by delay," his attorneys David Dow and Jeffrey Newberry, wrote in court documents. Buntion was also the first inmate executed in Texas in 2022. Although Texas has been the nation's busiest capital punishment state, it had been nearly seven months since it carried out an execution. There have been only three executions in each of the last two years, due in part to the coronavirus pandemic and delays over legal questions about Texas' refusal to allow spiritual advisers to touch inmates and pray aloud in the death chamber.
Texas prison officials agreed to Buntion's request to allow his spiritual adviser to pray aloud and touch him while he was put to death."I had stuffed so much of it away in a big trunk and shut the lid on it in my mind, in my heart because I didn't think anything was really going to come of it," Irby said.