Unfinished Lives

Remembering LGBT Hate Crime Victims

Hate Crime Convict Denied Parole For 5th Time, But May Be Out In A Year

Paul Broussard (l) and Jon Buice (r)

Huntsville, TX – A parole board in Huntsville, Texas has denied Jon Buice parole for the 5th time in connection with his role in the 1991 murder of gay Houston banker, Paul Broussard.  Buice was convicted in 1992 for stabbing Broussard several times outside the Houston gay nightclub Heaven and was sentenced to 45 years in prison. He has served 17 years of his sentence.  Fox 26 News has learned that the convicted killer may be granted parole in little more than a year from now.  Andy Kahan, a victims’ rights activist, told Fox 26 reporters that he could not remember any other case as serious as this one in which a prisoner has been denied parole only to be available for parole just one year later.  Broussard’s mother, Nancy Rodriguez, flew from Georgia to testify at the November parole board hearing for her son’s murderer.  In 2007, as she was about to attend Buice’s 3rd parole hearing, Rodriguez said to KPRC Local News 2 reporters,”I still miss my son terribly. I really do. I think about where would he be today. What would he have accomplished in his life?”   Rodriguez has tirelessly fought to keep Buice in prison for at least 27 full calendar years, one year’s imprisonment for each year of Paul’s short life.  In 1991, 10 males, including Buice, attacked Broussard and two other men as they left the Montrose area gay nightclub.  According to testimony at the 1992 trial, the teens who brutally beat and stabbed Broussard to death were under the influence of alcohol and drugs. Buice is the last person remaining in prison for the hate crime murder.  Buice has his advocates, too.  They point out that he has changed his life.  While in prison, he has earned several college degrees, and he has been what his boosters describe as “a model prisoner.”  Rodriguez is not impressed by their arguments.  “The issue is not what he’s become,” she said to the Houston press.  “It’s what he’s done to get here.”

December 17, 2009 - Posted by | Anglo Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Beatings and battery, gay men, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, stabbings, Texas | , , , , , , , , ,

3 Comments

  1. Leave his butt in jail. To take the life of an innocent person is the worst thing you can do to somebody. you cant take that back, you cant undo it. So what if you don’t like somebody, every body hates somebody. If you don’t like gay people, don’t hang out with them. Problem solved. We aren’t going any where so cry my a river, build a bridge and get the hell over it.

    Comment by Noname | December 17, 2009

  2. these perpetrators were from The Woodlands, over 20 miles away from the gayborhood. they drove that far to go out gay bashing. the brutality of this crime was appalling. I’m glad jon Buice has not wasted his time in prison. It’s a shame his co-defendants got off so easy. Jon Buice used the knife, meaning he was more culpable. If the crime was the other way, people travelling to The Woodlands, we wouldn’t be worried about parole the perpetrator would have been executed. Jon Buice can have visits by his family, something the victim and his family don’t enjoy.

    Comment by Michael Kaye | December 17, 2009


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