Gary Green, a Texas inmate convicted of fatally stabbing his estranged wife and drowning her 6-year-old daughter in a bathtub was executed on Tuesday, reports the Associated Press. 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 apologized profusely when asked by the warden if he had a final statement. “I apologize for all the harm I have caused you and your family,” Green said, looking at relatives of his victims. “We ate together, we laughed and cried together as a family. I’m sorry I failed you. ... You have to forgive me and heal and move on. ... I’m not the man I used to be.”
Instead of inserting 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 weighed 365 pounds. Ray Montgomery, Jazzmen’s father and one of the witnesses, said 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. In prior appeals, Green’s attorneys said 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.
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