Oklahoma Executes Raymond Johnson for 2007 Hammer Killing of Ex-Girlfriend, Baby

Oklahoma executed death row inmate Raymond Johnson by lethal injection Thursday morning. The 52-year-old had been convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend and her baby nearly two decades ago.

Prison officials said Johnson was pronounced dead at 10:12 a.m. at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester after receiving a three-drug injection.

He received a death sentence for the June 2007 killings of 24-year-old Brooke Whitaker and her 7-month-old daughter, Kya.

Johnson became the 11th person executed in the United States this year and the second in Oklahoma. Kendrick Simpson received a lethal injection in the state in February for a 2006 drive-by shooting that killed two men. Florida has conducted five executions since January, the most of any state.

Prosecutors said Johnson and Whitaker argued at her Tulsa home before he struck her repeatedly over the head with a metal claw hammer. The blows fractured her skull and caused more than 20 lacerations on her face and scalp. Whitaker remained conscious and pleaded with Johnson to spare her and Kya, who was asleep in a bedroom, according to documents from his April clemency hearing.

"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 then got a gas can from a backyard tool shed, poured gasoline on Whitaker and the house, lit a dish towel, threw it at her and fled, the attorney general's office said. Whitaker died from head injuries and smoke inhalation; her daughter died from severe burns.

"Raymond Johnson is a cruel murderer who inflicted unimaginable pain and suffering on his victims," Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in a statement.

Johnson's lawyers did not file a last-minute appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court.

In prior appeals, his attorneys argued without success that police made an illegal arrest, coerced a confession and that his trial lawyer admitted guilt in Whitaker's death without his approval.

Oklahoma's five-member Pardon and Parole Board voted unanimously in April to deny clemency. At the hearing, Johnson apologized to Whitaker's family, asked for forgiveness and said he had changed.

"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," he told Death Penalty Action, a national anti-death penalty group.

Whitaker's family supported the execution.

"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, wrote to the board.

Johnson also served nine years of a 20-year sentence for a 1996 manslaughter conviction.