Texas completes execution of murderer who set store clerk on fire

As reported in this AP piece, 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.” Here is more:

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….

Johnson’s execution was the second 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 four 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….

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….

Johnson was the fourth person put to death this year in Texas, historically the nation’s busiest capital punishment state. Tuesday’s executions in Texas and Indiana brought this year’s total in the U.S. to 18 inmates put to death.