Two prisoners on death row have been put to death by lethal injection.

Wife murderer Donnie Johnson and mass murderer Michael Samra were both executed in the US today.

Johnson murdered his wife with a plastic bag in 1984, while Samra killed five people, including two children, over a dispute about a pickup truck.

Johnson was put to death by lethal injection at 7:37p.m. CDT [12.37am GMT] at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee, the state's Department of Correction said in a statement.

He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to die in November 1985 for killing his wife, Connie, on December 8, 1984, after she went to see him at a Memphis camping supply store where he worked.

Johnson's co-worker Ronnie McCoy, an inmate on work release, testified that he left the couple alone in an office for about 15 minutes

When he returned, he found Connie suffocated, according to his court testimony.

McCoy testified that he and Johnson then put her body in her vehicle and drove it to a nearby shopping center where they left it.

Authorities said Johnson asked a store manager the next morning to help him find his wife, who he said had gone missing.

During their search, they found her dead in her van with a large garbage bag in her mouth, according to court documents.

During the investigation, Johnson told police that he had given his wife about $450 [£351] that day for Christmas shopping and that McCoy had tried to rob his wife and killed her in the process, according to the court documents.

Johnson did not testify during his trial. During his sentencing hearing, he took the stand where he denied killing his wife, placing blame on McCoy, the court documents said.

McCoy was not charged in the case. It is unclear if he was granted immunity for his testimony.

Johnson filed several unsuccessful appeals including a challenge to the state's lethal injection protocol with other inmates, arguing it caused "excruciating pain."

Samra was put to death at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement.

The 42-year-old was executed more than 20 years after he was convicted, along with his friend, of killing his friend's father, the father's fiancee and her two children after a dispute over the use of a pickup truck.

Johnson and Samra were the sixth and seventh inmates executed in the United States in 2019, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, an organization that tracks executions in the United States.

Source: Read Full Article