AP (File)
HOUSTON — The last of the 10 people serving time for the 1991 gay-bashing death of a Houston banker has left prison on parole.
The Houston Chronicle reports that Jon Buice left a state prison in Huntsville Wednesday.
Buice served 23 years of the 45-year sentence he got in a plea bargain. He was granted parole in November over the protests of Nancy Rodriguez, the mother of victim Paul Broussard.
Buice was 17 when he and nine other teens and young men drove into the city looking for gays to harass. They found Broussard, 27, and two friends walking near a gay nightspot, and the two groups got into a fight. In attempting to flee, Broussard ran into a dead-end alley, where he was surrounded and attacked and fatally stabbed by Buice.
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The November parole decision brought protests from within the criminal justice system and the LGBT community.
“The murder of Paul Broussard clearly was a hate crime,” Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson said in November. “The decision of this board sends a terrible message in a time when these crimes seem to be flourishing.”
Noel Freeman, former president of the Houston GLBT Political Caucus, on Wednesday repeated his November assessment of the release as a “travesty of justice.”
Broussard’s mother had called for Buice to serve at least 27 years behind bars – one year for every year of her son’s life.
Buice had previously been denied parole at least eight times.
