Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Hours before his execution, inmate takes matters into his own hands

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published October 20, 2006

LIVINGSTON, Texas - A convicted killer facing lethal injection beat the executioner to it Thursday, committing suicide by slitting his throat and arm with a blade in his Texas death row cell 15 hours before he was supposed to die.

Michael Dewayne Johnson, 29, was found in a pool of blood by officers making routine checks on him every 15 minutes, authorities said. He was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Johnson reportedly scrawled words in blood on the wall of his cell, but prison officials would not say what he wrote.

He is at least the seventh condemned man in Texas to take his own life since death row reopened in 1974.

No other prisoner has killed himself so close to his scheduled execution time. In 1999, a death row inmate overdosed on prescription drugs. He was hospitalized, then executed two days later.

Johnson had been set to die for the 1995 slaying of Jeff Wetterman, 27, gunned down at his family-run gasoline station and convenience store near Waco.

Prison system spokeswoman Michelle Lyons said that 15 minutes before Johnson was discovered, he was talking to the staff and gave no indication he was contemplating suicide.

He used a sharp piece of metal attached to what looked like a wooden Popsicle stick, Lyons said.

Besides the routine 15-minute checks that begin for inmates 36 hours before their execution, officers on death row in Texas routinely search the prisoner's cell every 72 hours for contraband.

Johnson would have been the 22nd Texas inmate executed this year.

[Last modified October 20, 2006, 05:33:21]