A death row inmate issued a chilling final request to his victim’s family shortly before he was executed earlier this week (May 20).
Matthew Lee Johnson was sentenced to death after he splashed 76-year-old Nancy Harris with lighter fluid and set her on fire during a robbery at a convenience store in Texas back in 2012.
Court documents state Johnson had poured the lighter fluid on Harris before insisting she open the till.
The death row inmate set her alight before fleeing. Harris – a mother and grandmother – was rushed to hospital and sadly died a few hours later.
Johnson was detained a short time afterwards, admitting to the crime but claiming he did not mean to cause harm.
Matthew Lee Johnson was executed earlier this week (Texas Department of Corrections)
The suspect said that he used the lighter fluid to intimidate Harris and had been under the influence of substances.
Johnson died by lethal injection on Tuesday (May 20), some 13 years after he committed the crime.
Just moments before his execution this week, Johnson turned to Harris’ family – who were watching through a window just feet away – asking for forgiveness.
He said: “As I look at each one of you, I can see her on that day. I please ask for your forgiveness. I never meant to hurt her.
“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.”
In his 2013 trial, Johnson called himself the ‘lowest scum of the earth’.
“I hurt an innocent woman. I took a human being’s life. I was the cause of that. It was not my intentions to – to kill her or to hurt her, but I did,” the death row inmate said.
Johnson filed a number of appeals regarding his conviction during his time on death row in Texas, but all of them were ultimately unsuccessful.
Nancy Harris died from her injuries (Restland Funeral Home)
Prior to his death, Johnson apologised to his wife and daughters for ‘giving up’, saying: “Just know that it’s nothing that y’all did. I made wrong choices, I’ve made wrong decisions, and now I pay the consequences.
“I thank the Lord for the last 13 years. He has given me the opportunity to ask for his forgiveness, and I thank him for his redemption.
“Welcome me father, thank each and everyone of you for being here. I’m done, Warden.”
He also thanked prison staff ‘for helping me and treating me like a man and treating me with fairness and giving me the opportunity to get in right standings with my Lord’.
Warning: This article contains discussion of sexual assault and description of violence which some readers may find distressing.
A death row inmate issued a chilling final statement to his victim’s family before he was executed by lethal injection on Thursday (April 24).
James Osgood, 55, was convicted of murder for the 2010 killing of Tracy Lynn Wilemon in Chilton County.
Prosecutors said Osgood sliced Brown’s throat after he and his girlfriend, Tonya Vandyke, sexually assaulted the 44-year-old recent divorcée, who was trying to get her life back on track.
Wilemon was reportedly Vandyke’s cousin, according to a report from The Associated Press.
Governor of Alabama, Kay Ivey, said in a statement: “The murder of Tracy Wilemon was premeditated, gruesome and disturbing, and tonight, the state carried out the death sentence of James Osgood.
The inmate was executed by lethal injection (Getty Stock Photo)
“Both Mr. Osgood and his accomplice, who will never see the light of day, from the moment they were inspired by a Hollywood torture scene, set out to commit this heinous crime against Ms. Wilemon and are now paying the price.
“And let’s be clear: At the end of all of this, Mr. Osgood robbed Ms. Wilemon of her life, something that can never be reversed for her or her family. I pray that her loved ones can feel some sense of closure today.”
Osgood was executed after receiving a lethal injection at a south Alabama prison on Thursday and was pronounced dead at 6:35pm.
Ivey, who has the power to exercise her clemency powers and announce a postponement on the execution, instructed Commissioner John Hamm to proceed with the death sentence.
Osgood did not appeal the sentence before being injected by lethal injection, and he used his final words for a chilling statement seemingly directed at Wilemon’s family.
The death row inmate was convicted of murder (Alabama Department of Corrections)
He told AP: “I’m a firm believer in, like I said in court, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I took a life, so mine was forfeited. I don’t believe in sitting here and wasting everybody’s time and everybody’s money.
“I’m not going to ask their forgiveness because I know they can’t give it. I regret taking her from them. I regret cutting her life short. I regret that I took one of God’s children. And I regret the pain and suffering that I caused, not only for the victim and her family, but to mine.”
If you’ve been affected by any of the issues in this article, you can contact The National Sexual Assault Hotline on 800.656.HOPE (4673), available 24/7. Or you can chat online via online.rainn.org
The final words of a death row inmate who was convicted of murdering a pastor have been revealed.
In 2011, Steven Lawayne Nelson killed 28-year-old Clint Dobson, a pastor at NorthPointe Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas.
As well as the young pastor being killed, Dobson’s secretary, Judy Elliot, was badly beaten but survived.
But Nelson claimed that he didn’t kill Dobson and that he’d entered the church on that fateful day to be lookout as his accomplices robbed the establishment.
During his testimony, he claimed Dobson and Elliot were already on the floor when he entered the church, adding that they were still breathing at that point.
Despite Nelson insisting that he was innocent, he was still sentenced to death and died by lethal injection yesterday (February 5).
Steven Lawayne Nelson died by lethal injection on February 5 (CECILE CLOCHERET/AFP via Getty Images)
Before his death, he shared his final words, telling his wife, whom he married while incarcerated, to ‘enjoy life’ while also saying: “It is what it is.”
“I’m not scared, I’m at peace,” Nelson continued, as per Associated Press. His final three words were: “Let’s ride, Warden.”
The 37-year-old died 24 minutes after the injection was administered and was pronounced dead at 6.50pm CST.
Speaking before his passing yesterday, Nelson insisted that he wasn’t ‘the monster they say I am’.
As to what he would say to Dobson’s secretary who was badly hurt in the ordeal, Nelson told NewsNation: “I will tell you that I’d like to apologize for my actions in the role that I played — even though I wasn’t the person who assaulted her. It still hurts to this day that I couldn’t do nothing at the time, you know?”
While most death row inmates get a final meal request, this wasn’t the case for Nelson.
The former inmate always claimed that he wasn’t responsible for the pastor’s death (CECILE CLOCHERET/AFP via Getty Images)
As to why he didn’t get one, it comes after the actions of another death row inmate – Lawrence Russell Brewer.
Brewer was executed in 2011 and before his death, he reportedly requested two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound of barbecue, three fajitas, a meat lover’s pizza, a pint of ice cream and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts.
But Brewer didn’t eat a single bite of the meal.
As a result, the state of Texas abolished all special meal requests for death row inmates. Instead, inmates who are set to be executed simply get whatever is served in the cafeteria.
“It is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege,” Senator John Whitmire, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, said at the time the decision was made.
The autopsy results of a death row inmate who chose to die by firing squad suggests the execution didn’t go to plan.
Mikal Mahdi was sentenced to death for his killing spree in Windston-Salem, North Carolina, in July 2004, where he took the life of a 29-year-old convenience store clerk, Christopher Jason Boggs, and gunned down 56-year-old off-duty police officer, James Myers, two days later in South Carolina.
The then-21-year-old shot Myers as many as eight times before attempting to burn his body.
On April 11, Mahdi was executed by firing squad at the age of 42 for his crimes committed two decades ago at the Broad River Correctional Institution.
Mahdi’s legal team said he opted to be executed by state marksmen as opposed to lethal injection or electrocution, believing it would be quicker and the least painful method.
However, an independent autopsy has now revealed the three gunmen likely missed Mahdi’s heart, instead striking him above the abdomen and piercing his liver and pancreas.
The results showed Mahdi suffered two gunshot wounds to his body, despite three gunmen being tasked with the execution.
Documents filed to the Supreme Court on Thursday (May 8) allege the convicted murderer endured a prolonged painful death beyond the ’10-to-15 second’ margin that was anticipated, reports Daily Mail.
Witnesses claim Mahdi cried out once he was shot and could be heard groaning and still breathing for at least a minute afterwards.
He wasn’t officially declared dead for four minutes, with his lawyers finding he likely lost consciousness some 30 to 60 seconds after being shot, two to four times longer than it should’ve been.
Doctor Jonathan Arden, a pathologist hired by Mahdi’s legal team, said: “The shooters missed the intended target area and the evidence indicates that he was struck by only two bullets, not the prescribed three.”
Dr Arden said Mahdi probably experienced intense pain for ‘air hunger,’ as his lungs tried to expand against his broken ribs and sternum and created a suffocating sensation as they failed to draw in enough oxygen.
David Weiss, an attorney for Mahdi, also told the news outlet: “The autopsy confirms what I saw and heard.
“Mikal suffered an excruciating death. We don’t know what went wrong, but nothing about his execution was humane.
Mikal Mahdi was 21 years old when he murdered two people (South Carolina Department of Corrections)
“The implications are horrifying for anyone facing the same choice as Mikal. South Carolina’s refusal to acknowledge their failures with executions cannot continue.”
The attorneys believe the execution was ‘botched’ as either the prison firing squad missed or the target over Mahdi’s chest wasn’t accurately aligned.
The independent result also comes as South Carolina’s Corrections Department had issued its own autopsy which suggested three bullets had struck him, with two hitting the same mark on Mahdi’s body.
Yet Mahdi’s lawyers described the state autopsy as ‘incredibly sparse, with far fewer details and photographs than normally issued.’
They claim there is a lack of evidence that two bullets entered the same place, such as a lack of X-rays and close-up photographs of Mahdi’s body or clothing.
“Mr. Mahdi elected the firing squad, and this Court sanctioned it, based on the assumption that SCDC could be entrusted to carry out its straightforward steps: locating the heart; placing a target over it; and hitting that target,” their letter to the court read. “That confidence was clearly misplaced.”
Dr Arden also said in his 40-year career, he had never encountered two bullets entering the exact same spot on a human body before.
LadBible group has contacted South Carolina Department of Corrections for comment.
A death row inmate’s final chilling words have been revealed after he was executed on Tuesday (June 11).
David Hosier was put to death yesterday by lethal injection at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Missouri after a decade in prison.
The 69-year-old was convicted for the murders of Angela and Rodney Gilpin in 2009, having allegedly had an affair with Angela.
According to Randy Dampf, who was a Jefferson City police officer at the time, and is now an investigator for the county prosecutor, Hosier killed the couple after Angela broke off their romance.
David Hosier has been on death row for 10 years (Missouri Department of Corrections)
This was further reiterated by Missouri governor Mike Parson, a former county sheriff, who said in a statement: “Ms. Angela Gilpin had her life stolen by David Hosier because he could not accept it when she ended their romantic involvement.
“He displays no remorse for his senseless violence. For these heinous acts, Hosier earned maximum punishment under the law.”
Hosier’s defence team at the time blamed his crime on the death of his father when he was 16 years old, citing that it caused trauma to the teen which the inmate wasn’t happy with.
He said that his trial should have focused on a lack of DNA, eyewitness accounts and fingerprints at the scene.
But in the end, he had a few thoughts on his mind.
He has always maintained his innocence (MISSOURIANS TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY)
His last words were: “I leave you all with love.
“Now I get to go to Heaven. Don’t cry for me. Just join me when your time comes.”
Hosier had always maintained his innocence in relation to the crime and was afraid of dying on death row.
The inmate told The Mirror one day before his scheduled death: “Everybody, no matter what, is afraid of death. If they say they’re not, something’s wrong with them.
“I know I’m innocent. I was not there. I did not kill these people. Period. I don’t know who did, but they’re still walking around free.
“I still don’t understand how you can find a person guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and sentence a person to death when you have no witnesses to tie this person to the crime.
The death penalty is a controversial subject (Getty Stock Images/JJ Gouin)
“You have no fingerprints, no DNA, no trace evidence, nothing tangible, no hard, physical evidence to tie me to this crime.”
Police, however found a protective order application in Angela’s purse and information about her being afraid of Hosier during the investigation.
According to court records, after their deaths, police believed that he was the killer and immediately tried to find him but when they followed his car, a chase ensued and when they caught him, he told the officers, ‘shoot me, and get it over with’.
That’s when they found 15 guns, 400 rounds of ammunition and a bulletproof vest in his car, which he blamed on being a fan of hunting.
However, they also found a note which read: “If you are going with someone do not lie to them.
“Be honest with them if there is something wrong. If you do not this could happen to YOU!!”
Featured Image Credit: Missouri Department of Corrections/MISSOURIANS TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY
