Texas has no shortage of ugly death penalty cases, and one of the ugliest is that of Carl Wayne Buntion.
Buntion had 11 felony convictions and had been in and out of prison multiple times at the time that he was passenger in a car stopped at the intersection of I-45 and Airline for a minor traffic violation on June 27, 1990. Buntion got out of the car and shot Houston Motorcycle Patrol Officer James Irby in the forehead with a .357-caliber Magnum, destroying Irby’s brain. Buntion contended that he was acting in self-defense.
During Buntion’s 1991 trial on capital murder charges, State District Judge William Harmon told the defendant that he was “doing God’s work” in making sure that he was executed. According to a subsequent law review article by Brent Newton: “Harmon taped a photograph of the ‘hanging saloon’ of the infamous Texas hanging judge Roy Bean on the front of his judicial bench, in full view of prospective jurors. Harmon superimposed his own name over the name ‘Judge Roy Bean’ that appeared on the saloon, undoubtedly conveying the obvious.” During the trial, Judge Harmon laughed at one of Buntion’s character witnesses and attacked an appeals court as “liberal bastards”and “idiots” after it ruled that he must allow the jury to consider mitigating evidence. Not surprisingly, Buntion was convicted and sentenced to death.
This past Friday, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt issued an opinion (downloadable here) overturning the conviction of Buntion. In the decision, Judge Hoyt found that Judge Harmon had deprived Buntion of his Constitutional right to a fair trial by bullying his lawyers, meeting privately with prosecutors and deferring to their wishes, hanging the Judge Roy Bean postcard from his bench, and by making remarks such as the “doing God’s work” one referred to above. Judge Hoyt concluded that, even before hearing the evidence, “Judge Harmon decided that Buntion was guilty and should die.”
The issues that arise from the Buntion case are not ones with easy answers. However, as noted in this earlier post, the state’s administration of the death penalty is questionable enough without questions arising in regard to the independence of the judiciary in the process. Judge Hoyt’s decision in this troubling case is a powerful reminder of that truth.