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| Living on death row in Tennessee: 'The rollercoaster is exhausting' |
| By theguardian.com- Max Blau |
| Published: 04/20/2015 |
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Donnie Johnson has spent nearly half of his life waiting to die. In 1985, the Memphis camping equipment center staffer was found guilty of suffocating his wife, Connie, with a plastic garbage bag. Since his conviction, he’s maintained his innocence; insisting that a work‐release inmate murdered his wife, and that he only helped dispose of the body at a nearby shopping center out of fear for his life. The 64‐year‐old death row inmate, who stays at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution on the western outskirts of Nashville, has twice been scheduled to die. Johnson received his first stay of execution in 2006, which later led to an unexpected meeting in 2012 with his stepdaughter, Cynthia Vaughn. The meeting gave the Southaven, Mississippi, resident, who was seven years old when her mother was killed, a chance to forgive her stepfather. The two have since met another four times, exchanged letters and chat on the phone every Saturday. “It changed my life totally,” Vaughn says. After spending most of her life hating her stepfather, she says she’s learned more about the mother she hardly knew and has commemorated each visit with a tattoo of a bird. “I can’t even think of a word to say how much it changed my life.” Read More. |
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