Texas executes Matthew Lee Johnson

Texas man is executed 13 years to the day of a store robbery in which he set a clerk on fire 

A Texas man was executed Tuesday evening, 13 years to the day of a convenience store robbery in which he set a clerk on fire in a Dallas suburb. 

Matthew Lee Johnson, 49, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was condemned for the May 20, 2012, attack on 76-year-old Nancy Harris, a great-grandmother he splashed with lighter fluid and set ablaze in the suburb of Garland. Badly burned, she died days afterward.

Asked by the warden if he had a final statement, Johnson turned his head and looked at his victim’s relatives, watching through a window close by. 

“As I look at each one of you, I can see her on that day,” he said, speaking slowly and clearly. “I please ask for your forgiveness. I never meant to hurt her.” He added, “I pray that she’s the first person I see when I open my eyes and I spend eternity with.” 

“I made wrong choices, I’ve made wrong decisions, and now I pay the consequences,” said Johnson, who also asked forgiveness from his wife and daughters. 

There was little reaction from Harris’ relatives — 3 sons, 2 daughters-in-law and a granddaughter — who witnessed the execution and declined to speak with reporters afterward. 

As the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began taking effect, Johnson gasped several times, then made repeated sounds like snoring. Within a minute, all movement stopped. He was pronounced dead at 6:53 p.m. CDT, 26 minutes after the drugs began flowing into his arms. 

Johnson’s execution was the 2nd carried out Tuesday in the United States. Hours earlier in Indiana, Benjamin Ritchie received a lethal injection for the 2000 killing of a police officer. 

The day’s executions were part of a group of 4 scheduled within about a week’s time. On May 15, Glen Rogers was executed in Florida. On Thursday, Oscar Smith is scheduled to receive a lethal injection in Tennessee.

Security video captured part of the attack against Harris who, despite her burns, was able to describe the suspect before she died. 

Johnson’s guilt was never in doubt. During his 2013 trial, he admitted to setting Harris on fire and also expressed remorse. “I hurt an innocent woman. I took a human being’s life ... It was not my intentions to -- to kill her or to hurt her, but I did,” he had said at the time. 

Johnson said he had not been aware of what he had done as he had been high after smoking $100 worth of crack. His attorneys told jurors Johnson had a long history of drug addiction and had been sexually abused as a child. 

Harris had worked at the convenience store for more than 10 years, living only about a block and a half away, according to testimony from one of her sons. She had 4 sons, 11 grandchildren and 7 great-grandchildren. 

Prosecutors said Harris had only been working her Sunday morning shift for a short time when Johnson walked in, poured lighter fluid over her head and demanded money. 

After Johnson grabbed the money from the register, he set Harris on fire and calmly walked out of the store, according to court documents. Harris frantically tried to extinguish herself and her clothing, exiting the store and screaming for help before a police officer used a fire extinguisher to douse the flames covering her body. Johnson was arrested about an hour later. 

Harris suffered extensive 2nd- and 3rd-degree burns over her head and face, neck, shoulders, upper arms, and leg and was in a great deal of pain in the days before she died, a nurse and doctor testified.

Johnson’s legal team did not pursue any appeals this week with the U.S. Supreme Court, according to David Dow, one of the inmate’s attorneys. Lower appeals courts had previously rejected defense requests to stay the execution, and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Friday denied Johnson’s request to commute his death sentence to a lesser penalty. 

In previous appeals, Johnson’s lawyers had argued his death sentence was unconstitutional because he was improperly determined to be a future danger to society, a legal finding that was needed to sentence him to death. His most recent appeals had argued his execution date had been illegally scheduled. 

— Johnson becomes the 4th person put to death this year in Texas, historically the nation’s busiest capital punishment state. He is the 595th condemned inmate to be put to death since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982, and the 78th person executed in Texas since Greg Abbott became Governor of Texas. 

— Johnson becomes the 18th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA, and the 1,625th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Source: The Associated Press, Staff, Rick Halperin, May 20, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde