Texas executes 400th inmate since 1982

updated 8:55 p.m. ET Aug. 22, 2007

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - A man convicted of killing a Houston convenience store clerk in 1998 was put to death Wednesday, marking the 400th execution in Texas since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982.

Texas is the nation's most active death penalty state since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976. Texas resumed carrying out executions six years later.

Johnny Ray Conner, 32, asked for forgiveness repeatedly and expressed love to his family and his victim's family, who watched him through windows in the death chamber. Before he began he speaking, he asked the warden his name, for permission to speak longer than the usual two to three minutes allotted and to have his victim's daughter pointed out to him.

He specifically asked one of his victims' relatives to look at him, but she didn't and remained turned to the side with her hands clasped in prayer.

"This is destiny. This is life. This is something Allah wants me to do," he said in his lengthy statement.

"I want you to understand," he said. "I'm not mad at you. When I get to the gates of heaven I'm going to be waiting for you. Please forgive me."

"What is happening to me is unjust and the system is broken," Conner said.

He was pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m., eight minutes after the lethal drugs began to flow.

Conner was the 21st put to death this year in Texas. Three more are scheduled to die next week.

Questions over an injury
Conner's lawyers earlier Wednesday lost an appeal to the Supreme Court to stop the lethal injection. In arguments rejected by the justices, Conner contended his trial attorneys were deficient for not investigating an old leg injury that left Conner with a limp. The disability would have prevented him from running away quickly from the store where Kathyanna Nguyen, 49, was gunned down on a Sunday afternoon in May 1998.

Witnesses who identified Conner as the gunman told of seeing a man running from the scene. None mentioned a limp.

A federal judge agreed with the argument and granted Conner a new trial. A federal appeals court disagreed and overturned that ruling this year, clearing the way for Conner's execution date.

Conner's trial lawyers disputed they were ineffective, saying the injury never was an issue because Conner told them his broken leg long had been healed.

Kenneth Williams, a University of Miami law professor now representing Conner, argued in his appeal that was before the Supreme Court on Wednesday that because trial attorneys failed to look into the leg injury, they were "not in a position to undermine the eyewitness testimony further and ... not able to argue to the jury that there was reasonable doubt that Mr. Conner was the assailant."

State lawyers argued Conner never complained to his trial attorneys about witnesses never referring to his limp.

Lyn McClellan, the Harris County district attorney who prosecuted the case, said Conner's complaint was a fabrication.

"They had video of him in jail walking down the hallway just fine without any limp," he said. "That's the problem with some made-up defense. You've got to live it out all the time or you get caught."

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