An Oklahoma man convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend and her 7-month-old daughter after setting their home on fire nearly 20 years ago was set to be executed on Thursday.
Raymond Johnson, 52, was scheduled to receive a lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.
He was condemned for the June 2007 death of 24-year-old Brooke Whitaker and her 7-month-old daughter, Kya.
Prosecutors said that after Johnson and Whitaker got into an early morning argument at her home in Tulsa, he repeatedly hit her over the head with a metal claw hammer.
Whitaker’s skull was fractured and she had more than 20 lacerations on her face and scalp. But she was still conscious and begged Johnson to spare her and Kya, who was sleeping in a bedroom, prosecutors said in documents prepared for Johnson’s clemency hearing in April.
“She begged him to call 911. She begged him to let her mom come get baby Kya. She begged him to think of her children,” the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office said. Whitaker had three other children.
Johnson retrieved a gas can from a tool shed in the backyard, doused Whitaker and the house with gasoline, lit a dishtowel on fire, threw it at Whitaker and left, the attorney general’s office said. Whitaker died from head injuries and smoke inhalation while her daughter died from severe burns.
“Raymond Johnson is a cruel murderer who inflicted unimaginable pain and suffering on his victims,” Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in a statement.
Johnson’s attorneys have not filed a last-minute appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court to try and stop his execution. His attorney did not reply to multiple calls and emails seeking comment.
His attorneys had unsuccessfully argued in prior appeals that Johnson’s arrest was illegal, his confession had been coerced by police and his trial lawyer had conceded without his permission his guilt in Whitaker’s death.
In April, Oklahoma’s five-member Pardon and Parole Board voted unanimously to deny Johnson clemency.
At his clemency hearing, Johnson apologized to the victims’ family and asked for forgiveness, saying he was a changed person.
“I apologize. No excuses, no justifications, a sincere apology. And to know that it’s sincere, look at my actions. Look at my life. Look how I’ve changed. I’m living a remorseful life. I’m living it,” Johnson said in an interview with Death Penalty Action, a national anti-death penalty group.
At Johnson’s clemency hearing, Whitaker’s family members asked for the lethal injection to proceed.
“Executing him will not give me my mom or sister back, it will not take away almost 20 years of pain. What it will do is finally stop him from continuing to hurt us,” Logan Kleck, Whitaker’s oldest daughter, said in a letter to the board.
In addition to his first-degree murder conviction, Johnson has a 1996 conviction for manslaughter and served nine years of a 20-year prison sentence in that case.
If the execution is carried out, Johnson would be the second person put to death this year in Oklahoma and the 11th person in the country.
