Texas man executed for setting 76-year-old convenience store clerk on fire during a robbery

 The 18th Execution of 2025

A Texas man was executed on May 20, 2025, 13 years to the day of a convenience store robbery in which he set a clerk on fire in a Dallas suburb, reported The Associated Press.

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.

Asked by the warden if he had a final statement, Johnson turned his head and looked at his victim’s relatives, watching through a window close by.

“As I look at each one of you, I can see her on that day,” he said, speaking slowly and clearly. “I please ask for your forgiveness. I never meant to hurt her.” He added, “I pray that she’s the first person I see when I open my eyes and I spend eternity with.”

“I made wrong choices, I’ve made wrong decisions, and now I pay the consequences,” said Johnson, who also asked forgiveness from his wife and daughters.

There was little reaction from Harris’ relatives — three sons, two daughters-in-law and a granddaughter — who witnessed the execution and declined to speak with reporters afterward.

As the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began taking effect, Johnson gasped several times, then made repeated sounds like snoring. Within a minute, all movement stopped. He was pronounced dead at 6:53 p.m. CDT, 26 minutes after the drugs began flowing into his arms.

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.

Harris had worked at the convenience store for more than 10 years, living only about a block and a half away, according to testimony from one of her sons. She had four sons, 11 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

Prosecutors said Harris had only been working her Sunday morning shift for a short time when Johnson walked in, poured lighter fluid over her head and demanded money.

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