Gay Houston man’s killer is still behind bars after two decades, but will he be released this year?
Jon Buice
HOUSTON — Jon Buice has been in prison in South Texas since 1992, when he was sentenced to 45 years for the brutal gay-bashing murder of Houston banker Paul Broussard.
When his parole hearings come up, a media firestorm ensues as the LGBT community and Broussard’s mother, Nancy Rodriguez, fight to keep him locked up. But some people in the LGBT community, led by longtime Houston activist Ray Hill, have fought for Buice to be let out on parole.
That fight was won in 2011 when the parole board granted Buice parole and later reversed its decision based on new information. He was denied parole again last year, and will have a hearing on Sept. 24 for parole again.
Buice declined a request for a prison interview.
That new information was allegedly Buice’s disciplinary file that a state lawmaker shared with Andy Kahan, victim advocate for the city of Houston.
Buice’s attorney, Bill Habern, told the Texas Tribune in August that he thinks Buice was denied parole in 2011 and again last year because of the disciplinary file, which revealed Buice had several infractions and an alleged relationship with a prison chaplain. Both Kahan and Rodriguez said they were led to believe that Buice was a model inmate.
Inmates’ disciplinary files are confidential under state law, but lawmakers may obtain access to them.
The Public Integrity Unit, which is under the Travis County district attorney and responsible for investigating wrongdoing by state officials, launched an investigation into Habern’s allegations and recently ended its investigation without charges against anyone.
Habern told Dallas Voice he had no comment about the case. He said all he had to say he told ABC 13 in Houston in an interview that aired Monday, Sept. 16.
“I have no comment about the Buice case,” Habern said. “I have nothing against the gay and lesbian community whatsoever but they have been so outrageous. In their reporting of this case, we’re not speaking to any issue in it.”
In the interview with ABC 13, Habern said that he’s not only fighting the parole board, but politics and Kahan. Footage of Kahan was also shown of him telling a documentary film crew that a state lawmaker gave him the file to review.
Kahan did not return calls seeking comment.
But Habern told ABC that the infractions were for having an inappropriate relationship with a prison employee, hanging a clothesline in his cell after proper hours and having sunglasses in his cell without a commissary receipt.
Aside from the recent controversy about Buice’s file, online discussions in recent years about the case have examined the benefit of forgiving Buice for
Paul Broussard
Broussard’s murder and questioned why he’s still in jail.
Buice was one of 10 youths who drove to Houston from the suburb of The Woodlands in July 1991 after drinking and doing drugs. When they saw
Broussard and two other men walking home from one of the area’s gay nightclubs, they began to shout insults at them before exiting their vehicles and attacking the three gay men.
The other two men managed to escape and run away, but Broussard was cornered by the gang. He was punched, kicked with steel-toed boots, hit with a nail-studded board and stabbed three times. Buice was the one who stabbed him and he’s the only one who remains incarcerated.
Emotional pleas from Broussard’s mother to keep him in prison at least 27 years, the age of Broussard when he was killed, and attention from the LGBT community and surrounding media coverage may be reasons for his continuing incarceration. However, many people convicted of similar offenses without bias motivation are paroled having served less time than Buice already has.
Nancy Rodriguez, Broussard’s mother, responded to a blog called Off the Kuff earlier this year, saying she is hardly the only one calling for Buice to remain incarcerated.
“My son suffered a great deal and was murdered by Buice simply because he was gay,” she wrote in part. “Paul was a very kind, intelligent loving and wonderful person who graduated from Texas A&M. How dare you try to make Buice the victim. He needs to stay in prison. What has Buice done except cause a lifetime a pain and heartache.”
Rodriguez did not return calls seeking comment.
Several Houston lawmakers helped advocate to keep Buice behind bars, including state Sen. Rodney Ellis, state Reps. Garnet Coleman, Jessica Farrar and Senfronia Thompson, as well as Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee.
Chuck Smith, executive director of statewide LGBT advocacy group Equality Texas, said the organization has always advocated for Buice to serve his entire 45-year sentence.
“This was an instance of a bias-motivated hate crime and a jury convicted him of that crime and sentenced him for that crime,” Smith said. “Given the nature of the crime, it continues to be our position that he serve the sentence that he received.”
Houston activist Ray Hill has questioned whether the attack was because of Broussard’s sexual orientation. When police wouldn’t investigate his murder,
Hill said he organized the Houston LGBT community to make the media aware that a gay man was murdered and the community wanted justice.
“This was 1991. Weekend gay-bashing was not a rarity,” Hill said. “We solved that case not with the police’s help, but with the media.”
Hill said the “gay-bashing story is a creature of my invention” to gain the media’s attention for coverage, which led to Buice and the others being identified two weeks later.
He later had the teens write him so he could work on their anti-gay bias on his radio show, The Prison Show, but he said none of them were homophobic.
“This case is about 10 kids, the oldest of which was 17 years old, getting drunk and stoned and doing something stupid that took one person’s life and destroyed their own,” he said.
Hill has gotten to known Buice since 1995 and considers him a “very close friend.” He said Buice has a gay uncle and isn’t homophobic.
While Hill said he played the media back then to get coverage, he said most of the LGBT community don’t know the facts of the story, adding that emotions have outweighed the facts.
Hill said Buice, who’s almost 40, has earned a bachelor’s degree in business and is working on a master’s in psychology. He said he continues to hope every year that Buice is granted parole since he’s spent more than half his life in prison.
Asked if he thinks Buice will get out of prison this year, Hill said, “I hope so.”
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition September 20, 2013.
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