Death Penalty News

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 b...

Without clemency from the governor, Don Johnson will be put to death on May 16 As detailed in his application for clemency, which was delivered to Gov. Bill Lee earlier this month, Johnson’s mother Ruby was married to a relentlessly brutal man named James Lee who “throughout their 46 years of marriage … treated Ruby like a whipped animal.”  Her husband slapped, beat and choked her, Johnson’s lawyers write. At one point, Ruby fled to Michigan, and a brief relationship with another man, Elmer Young, left her pregnant with a baby boy. But she returned to James Lee in hopes of finding financial security. “It was into this violent and hate-filled home that Don Johnson was born,” Johnson’s lawyers write. They go on: “Donnie Johnson was a frail little boy, with bad eyes, and no love. He wore coke bottle glasses and was a regular target of bullies (at school and at home). He was routinely and mercilessly beaten by James Lee for any and all reasons. James Lee would use a leat...

On the evening of Nov. 1, as day turned into night outside the Riverbend National Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee, Edmund Zagorski spoke his last words. “Let’s rock,” he said, before prison staff covered his head with a black shroud and sent thousands of volts of electricity through his body. At 7:26 p.m. he was pronounced dead. Zagorski had specifically requested to die by electrocution rather than lethal injection, which has been the standard method for many years. He wanted to avoid the seemingly torturous deaths endured when dying by lethal injection. Others facing their own executions are demanding the firing squad or the gas chamber. Despite the ongoing decline in support among Americans for the death penalty, an ugly national conversation has begun as to how to put an end to the lives of people convicted of heinous crimes. What does this have to do with Oregon? Our state has had a moratorium on executions in place since 2011. Moreover, we have executed on...

IMPORTANT NOTICE: It seems that Google made a few changes to the way images are shown on Google-powered blogs. Pictures and links to social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) will no longer be loaded if you are using an ad blocker. Please be advised that no commercial activity whatsoever (ads, links, etc.) is conducted by DPN on their website. Ads, if any shown, are selected and inserted on this page by Google, not by DPN. Disable your ad blocker if pictures and/or videos are no longer shown on DPN pages. Please note that this may not apply to all browsers. When it comes to the death penalty, guilt or innocence shouldn’t really matter to Christians.   NASHVILLE — Until August, Tennessee had not put a prisoner to death in nearly a decade. Last Thursday, it performed its third execution in four months. This was not a surprising turn of events. In each case, recourse to the courts had been exhausted. In each case Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican, declined to intervene, tho...

"Media: Please skip the "last meal" articles and instead write about the fact that David Miller was subjected to horrific abuse throughout his childhood that resulted in severe mental illness. This execution is plain wrong and the public deserves to know about David's background." -- Sister Helen Prejean, author of " Dead Man Walking "

A Tennessee inmate is scheduled to become the second person to die in the state's electric chair in as many months, nearly two decades after Tennessee adopted lethal injection as its preferred method of execution. Both David Earl Miller, 61, and Edmund Zagorski before him chose the electric chair over lethal injection, a process that proponents said would be painless and humane. But the inmates argued in court that Tennessee's current midazolam-based injection method causes a prolonged and torturous death. They pointed to the August execution of Billy Ray Irick, which took about 20 minutes during which he was observed coughing and huffing before turning a dark purple. Their case was thrown out, largely because a judge said they failed to prove that a more humane alternative was available. Zagorski was executed on November 1. Miller was convicted of killing 23-year-old Lee Standifer in 1981 in Knoxville. Ms Standifer was a woman with a mental impairmen...

Tennessee death row inmate David Earl Miller has been moved into a cell next to the electric chair days before his scheduled execution. The Tennessee Department announced the move Tuesday, as preparations for Miller's execution continued.  The new cell is part of Miller's "death watch," a period of time within 72 hours of an execution, when an inmate is under 24-7 surveillance and other heightened security measures. Unless a court or Gov. Bill Haslam intervenes, Miller will stay in the new cell until he is put to death Thursday night.  Miller, 61, has told prison officials he wants to die by the electric chair. RELATED : 'A simmering rage' led David Earl Miller to Tennessee's electric chair David Earl Miller is scheduled to die by electrocution Thursday Inmates can choose the chair over lethal injection if they were convicted of a crime that took place before 1999.  The chair was used last for the execution of Edmund Zago...

A death row inmate who is scheduled to executed next week in Tennessee has requested the electric chair and not the state's preferred method of a lethal injection. Lawyers for David Earl Miller have argued that Tennessee's midazolam-based, three-drug injection method causes excruciating pain. In a court filing Monday, attorneys for the state said Miller had picked the electric chair, though Miller's attorneys had requested an extension of a deadline for him to make a choice. Miller became the second death row inmate in Tennessee to request electrocution since Edmund Zagorski, who was put to death in the state's electric chair on November 1. Miller, 61, is scheduled to die on December 6 for the 1981 slaying of 23-year-old Lee Standifer in Knoxville. David Earl Miller was convicted of killing Lee Standifer, a young woman with a mental disability.  Her naked body was found on May 21, 1981, in the backyard of the Knoxville home where Miller had be...

A US death row inmate who asked to be executed by firing squad has been told he must choose between the electric chair and lethal injection. Tennessee prisoner David Earl Miller, 61, was sentenced to death 36 years ago for murdering a 23-year-old woman whom he had been dating. Victim Lee Standifer, who had learning difficulties, was found with multiple stab wounds in Miller’s garden in Knoxville in 1981. Her injuries also suggested she had been bludgeoned in the head with a fire poker. Lethal injection is Tennessee’s preferred execution method, but inmates whose crimes were committed before 1999 have the option of choosing the electric chair. Earlier this month the state executed a prisoner by electrocution for the first time in 11 years. Double murderer Edmund Zagorski, 63, had refused a lethal injection. Miller and three other inmates have launched a legal bid to be permitted death by firing squad, which is not allowed under state law. The prisoner’s lawyer...