Texas executes Dallas man for killing wife and 6-year-old daughter

HUNTSVILL. A Texas prisoner convicted of stabbing his ex-wife and drowning his 6-year-old daughter in a bathtub almost 14 years ago in Dallas was executed Tuesday.

Gary Green, 51, received a lethal injection at the Huntsville State Penitentiary. He was convicted for the September 2009 deaths of 32-year-old Lovette Armstead and his daughter Jazmine Montgomery at their Oak Cliff home. Green’s lawyers filed no appeals to stop the execution.

Ray Montgomery, the father of the jazz, recently said he does not support Greene’s execution, but sees the justice system in action.

“This is justice for the way my daughter was tortured. This is justice for the way Lovett was killed,” Montgomery, 43, said.

In previous appeals, Green’s lawyers have said he is mentally handicapped and suffers from a lifelong mental health problem.

“These devaluations probably led to [Green] failing to form the intent necessary to commit murder,” Greene’s lawyers wrote in 2018.

These appeals were rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court and lower appellate courts.

The High Court banned the death penalty for the mentally handicapped, but not for people with serious mental illness.

Authorities said Green committed the murders after Armstead attempted to have their marriage annulled. On the day of the murders, Armstead wrote two letters to Green telling him that although she loved him, she should “do what is best for me”. In her own letter, which was angry and incoherent, Green expressed her belief that Armstead and her children were involved in a plot against him.

“You asked for a monster, here it is, the monster you made for me. … Five lives will be taken today, I am the fifth,” Green wrote.

Armstead received more than two dozen stab wounds, and Greene drowned the jazzmen in the house’s bathtub.

Authorities said Green also intended to kill Armstead’s other two sons, 9-year-old Jerrett and 12-year-old Jerome. Green stabbed Jerret, but both boys survived.

“Said [Green] because we’re too young to die and we won’t tell anyone,” Jarrett told jurors, testifying about how he convinced Green to spare their lives.

Josh Healy, one of the Dallas County District Attorney’s attorneys who convicted Greene, said the boys were incredibly brave.

Green “was an angry boy. It was one of the worst cases he’s ever been involved in,” said Healy, who is now a lawyer in Dallas.

Montgomery said he still has a close relationship with Armstead’s two sons. He said that they both lead productive lives and that Jerome Armstead has a jazz-like daughter.

“I think they’re still in a lot of pain,” said Montgomery, a special education English teacher.

In recent years, Montgomery and Jerome Armstead have attended domestic violence seminars. Montgomery said he was trying to help other people recognize the signs of domestic violence, signs he didn’t see before Lovett Armstead and her daughter were killed.

“Just being able to come out and help and spread the word was kind of therapy for me,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery, who is a deacon at his church in Dallas, said he continues to live like his daughter is still here, even throwing parties for her every birthday. He also planned a graduation party for her, including a parade at her grave and a barbecue in the backyard with her family.

“It was my way of dealing with it, to make her feel like she was still there. I once prayed at her grave and told her that I would never let her name die,” Montgomery said.

Green’s execution was the first of two scheduled in Texas this week. Another prisoner, Arthur Brown Jr., will be executed on Thursday.

Greene became the fourth prisoner in Texas and the eighth in the United States to be executed this year.

He was one of six Texas death row inmates involved in a lawsuit aimed at preventing the state’s prison system from using expired and dangerous drugs for executions. Although an Austin civil court judge tentatively agreed to the claims, four prisoners, including Green, were executed this year.

Juan A. Lozano and Michael Gracik, Associated Press

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