Tennessee executes Donnie Edward Johnson by lethal injection
Death row inmate Donnie Edward Johnson died at 7:37 p.m. CDT Thursday after Tennessee prison officials executed him by lethal injection. He was 68.
He was the 136th person put to death by Tennessee since 1916 and the 4th person since the state resumed executions in August.
Johnson was sentenced to death for the 1984 murder of his wife, Connie Johnson, in Memphis. He suffocated her by stuffing a 30-gallon trash bag down her throat.
Moments before officials began administering the fatal doses, Johnson, held down by straps over his chest and arms, said as part of his final words: "I commend my life into your hands. Thy will be done. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen."
Then, for 2 minutes, he sang.
Johnson and his legal team have not questioned the horrific nature of his crime.
But they had stressed his religious transformation behind bars while urging Gov. Bill Lee to grant him mercy. Johnson became an elder in the Seventh-day Adventist Church on death row, and lead prayer services for his fellow inmates.
Connie Johnson's daughter Cynthia Vaughn, whom Donnie Johnson adopted, became an advocate for her stepfather in the lead-up to the execution, begging the governor to intervene. Johnson's son said the state should carry out the death sentence.
An hour before the execution, a group of people believed to be witnesses walked into the prison with their arms linked. Johnson’s spiritual adviser John Dysinger and his wife came and met with him and left.
He didn’t want them to witness the execution.
"This tragedy has come to an end for us all," Johnson's family said in a statement through their attorney. "For some, the pain will remain forever."
While Johnson has recently received a lot of media attention surrounding his execution, the family said they hope the victim is remembered.
"Connie was loved and has been missed these many years," the statement said. "Connie had a great laugh and the kindest heart. We pray for peace for her children and for her family. We hope today will give Connie's family some closure they so deeply deserve."
Connie Johnson’s brother Jackie Duvall, who was not a witness at the execution, said Thursday night that “it came to justice.”
“Justice was done,” Duvall said. “It took 35 years, but I hate it on both ends, but mostly the way he didn’t have to murder my sister like that. That was — a very dirty, evil murderer.
“We have been through total hell with all of this.”
The execution
Johnson is the 2nd death row inmate to die by lethal injection since the state resumed executions last year. Billy Ray Irick died by lethal injection on Aug. 9. The state electrocuted Edmund Zagorski and David Miller.
The curtain to the execution room lifted at 7:17 p.m. Minutes later, officials administered the cocktail of powerful and deadly drugs, starting with midazolam, intended to render Johnson unconscious.
As the sedative began coursing through his veins, Johnson sang. His voice was weakened by 2 strokes, but the words to the hymns were clear for more than 2 minutes.
"No more crying there, we are going to see the king. No more dying there, we are going to see the king," he sang out.
He was in the middle of the lyrics when he fell silent.
By 7:24 p.m. Johnson made a raspy, snoring noise and the warden checked to see if he was conscious.
"Don? Don?" he asked.
Then came vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride, drugs to stop his lungs and heart.
Minutes later, there was a high-pitched "ah," gasp, media witnesses reported.
His face appeared purple then slowly turned ashen.
Then the room was quiet. All movement stopped.
Then the curtain fell.
He was declared dead at 7:37 p.m. local time in Nashville.
His attorney, Kelley Henry, said she thought she saw Johnson's eye open after the 1st drug was injected. Then she heard gasping, choking and gurgling.
She saw that as evidence that the sedative midazolam had not rendered Johnson unconscious, but had left him aware of searing pain and the sensation of drowning.
"To my ears, it became louder," she said. "It is my belief that I did witness my client, observing, feeling and being aware of the pulmonary edema."
Johnson, Henry said she believed, felt the sensation of being "buried alive" from the paralytic and the sensation of "liquid fire," from the potassium.
She recalled how she woke up Thursday to a call from Johnson, who wanted to check in on her.
He recited Bible verses to her that she wrote down to look up again, Henry said in an emotional statement following the execution.
"He was tired but at peace," she said. "We prayed together at the end."
He sang to her as she stood standing outside the execution chamber door to leave.
No last-minute legal maneuvers
Unlike past executions, Johnson's legal team did not pursue myriad last-minute legal maneuvers. Instead, they put their hopes in the governor. Lee on Tuesday denied Johnson clemency.
“After a prayerful and deliberate consideration of Don Johnson's request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee and will not be intervening,” Lee said.
Religious leaders and others had hoped Johnson's plea would appeal to Lee's own Christian faith, something he touted during his successful campaign for governor last year.
Many felt that, if any Tennessee death row inmate deserved mercy because of a transformation behind bars, it was Johnson. Some had argued that Johnson should have remained in prison for life, allowing him to continue to minister to others.
Leaders of several Christian faiths, including the president of the worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church and Catholic and Episcopal bishops in Tennessee, had urged Lee to halt the execution.
Still, while Lee's decision was a blow to religious leaders, they along with Johnson's legal team said the inmate was at peace with the decision.
The Rev. Charles Fels, Johnson's clemency attorney, said Johnson "accepts it as God’s will."
"Although we appreciate Gov. Lee and his staff for carefully considering our application for clemency for Don, we, along with thousands of Christians in Tennessee and around the world, are deeply saddened by today’s decision," Fels said in a statement Tuesday.
"Also disappointed are thousands of citizens who had hoped that Governor Lee would use his unique constitutional clemency power to consider matters that no court could, including moral transformation, forgiveness, and the entire positive arc of Don’s life after 1984."
Outside the prison Thursday about 50 people stood in a circle in a field, protesting Johnson's execution. They sang and shared stories of redemption as they hoped for a last-minute call from Lee to stop the execution.
"I am not thankful for what is happening but I am happy for the testimony he has shown," said Pastor Kevin Riggs, adding the last time he saw Johnson, he appeared tired.
"I was discouraged but Don told me not to worry," Riggs said.
On the other side of the fence from the group stood Rick Laude, 56, a lone supporter for the execution.
Johnson, he said, brought his fate upon himself.
Though usually loud and boisterous in his demonstrations at past executions, Laude was silent Thursday.
The crime and the victim
Johnson, who once told police he did not kill his wife, stopped contesting his guilt. In his clemency application, he said a childhood of abuse and neglect led him to become "a liar, a cheat, a con man and a murderer."
The Tennessee Supreme Court described Connie Johnson's death as "inhuman and brutal to an almost indescribable degree.” Other relatives said her death tore the family apart.
Some victim advocates had lobbied for Lee to allow the execution to proceed, including Johnson's estranged son Jason, who disagreed sharply with his half-sister Cynthia Vaughn about Donnie Johnson's fate.
Jason Johnson also reached out to Lee to make his case.
“If he found redemption, that doesn’t matter. That’s between him and God,” Jason Johnson has said. “His forgiveness is to come from the Lord and his redemption is to come from the Lord, not the government. The Bible also says, ‘An eye for an eye.’ ”
The crime occurred about 2 weeks before Christmas, when Donnie Johnson — aided by a co-worker — left his wife’s body in a van outside the Mall of Memphis.
Retired Memphis Police officers Jerry Bursi and John Garner remember her lying in the van with the plastic garbage bag stuffed down her throat. Her purse was missing. Only about 2 inches of the 30-gallon bag protruded from her mouth, they said.
John Garner was a sergeant in the homicide division of the Memphis Police Department in 1984 when Connie Johnson was murdered, May 06, 2019. Donnie Edward Johnson, 68, is scheduled to die May 16 for killing his wife, Connie Johnson, in Memphis in 1984. Brad Vest, Memphis Commercial Appeal
A Shelby County medical examiner would later say that she had cuts and bruises on her head, that she bled internally and had fought back.
Donnie Johnson had killed her earlier that day at his workplace. During his trial, witnesses testified that they had been talking about divorce — and that Donnie Johnson had said he couldn’t afford one.
Connie Johnson was only 30 at the time of her death. The couple were approaching their seventh wedding anniversary.
Relatives recalled that she loved to dance and joke and cared deeply for her two children. She had grown up on a farm in a large family and was a hard worker. At times, she juggled her studies with a job and being a mother.
“He took such a good person and a good mother and a good daughter and a good sister. I don’t understand why,” said Wanda Clark, one of Connie Johnson’s sisters. “Connie wanted to live too. She loved her home, she loved her family, and she loved her kids. For somebody to come and take all this away, it don’t make no sense. Not a bit.”
Johnson becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Tennessee and the 10th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 2000.
Johnson becomes the 7th condemned death row inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1497th overall since the nation resumed executions in 1977.
Sources: The Tennessean & Rick Halperin, Staff, May 16, 2019
MILESTONE
With the executions of Michael Samra in Alabama and Donnie Johnson in Tennessee on May 16, the USA has now executed 1,497 condemned individuals since the death penalty was re-legalized on July 2, 1976 in the US Supreme Court Gregg v Georgia decision.
Gary Gilmore was the 1st person executed, in Utah, on January 17, 1977.
Below is a list of scheduled executions as the nation approaches a terrible milestone of 1500 executions in the modern era.
NOTE: The list is likely to change over the coming months as new execution dates are added and possible stays of execution occur.
1498-------May 23-------------Bobby Joe Long-----------Florida
1499-------May 30-------------Christopher Price--------Alabama
1500------July 31-------------Ruben Gutierrez----------Texas
1501------Aug. 15-------------Dexter Johnson-----------Texas
1502-------Aug. 15------------Stephen West-------------Tennessee
1503-------Aug. 21------------Larry Swearingen---------Texas
1504-------Sept. 4------------Billy Crutsinger---------Texas
1505-------Sept. 10-----------Mark Anthony Soliz-------Texas
1506-------Sept. 12-----------Warren Henness-----------Ohio
1507-------Oct. 2-------------Stephen Barbee-----------Texas
➤ Learn more about efforts to #StopThe1500th Execution and how you can be involved at
http://deathpenaltyaction.org/1500th
⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde