Texas Inmate Kills Self Day of Executions

A Texas death row inmate decided this morning to jump the gun (or, knife, as it were) killing himself 15 hours before his scheduled execution.

A death-row inmate slit his own throat with a makeshift knife early Thursday, committing suicide about 15 hours before he was scheduled to be executed, a prison official said. Michael Dewayne Johnson, 29, was on death row for the 1995 killing of a convenience store clerk near Waco.

Early Thursday, he slashed his own throat and arm with a makeshift blade fashioned from a small piece of metal attached to a wooden stick, said Michelle Lyons, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Huntsville.

Prison guards had been checking on Johnson’s welfare every 15 minutes, as is customary, when they found him unresponsive in a pool of blood in his cell, Lyons said. He was taken to a hospital in nearby Livingston, where he was pronounced dead, Lyons said.

While I applaud Johnson’s initiative, the timing could have certainly been better.

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. madmatt says:

    One last f-off to the system and he screws up the lives of the gaurds…a notoriously bloodthirsty group even by texas standards.

  2. whatever says:

    Couldn’t he have done this a decade ago and saved the taxpayers of Texas the expense of housing and feeding him?

  3. Bandit says:

    He was taken to a hospital in nearby Livingston, where he was pronounced dead, Lyons said.

    Why the bother?

  4. ranman says:

    The same thing happened in Oklahoma about 15 years ago and the Oklahoma County DA was pissed-off because he was unable to execute a cop killer.

  5. floyd says:

    certainly a sort of victory, leaving the state angry and frustrated. if he had lived a while they would have spent millions [if necessary] to bring him to a healthy condition in order to kill him and show the awesome power of the state.

  6. While I applaud Johnson’s initiative, the timing could have certainly been better.

    Droll, James. Very droll. (I approve.)