A death row inmate housed at the Kentucky State Penitentiary died last week, according to a spokesperson for the state’s Justice & Public Safety Cabinet.
Donald H. Johnson pleaded guilty in 1994 to murder, first-degree robbery, first-degree burglary and two counts of first-degree sexual abuse in the 1989 death of 61-year-old Helen Madden at the Bright and Clean Laundry in Hazard. One of Madden’s coworkers at the laundromat said her body was so disfigured that they could not identify her. Johnson was sentenced to death in 1997.
A spokesperson for the Kentucky Justice & Public Safety Cabinet confirmed to WKMS that Johnson, 59, died on Oct. 1 – 29 years to the day since he was sentenced to face the death penalty. In a statement, cabinet communications director Morgan Hall said Johnson’s cause of death “does not appear to involve any criminal activity,” and said law enforcement had been notified of his death.
An attorney representing Johnson also confirmed his death in a notice to the U.S. Supreme Court filed Monday as part of a legal appeal involving the Kentucky death row inmate.
Neither the state penitentiary nor the Kentucky Justice & Public Safety Cabinet publicly announced Johnson’s death. As of early Tuesday afternoon, Johnson is still listed among Kentucky’s death row inmates on Kentucky’s Department of Corrections website, but does not appear in Kentucky’s online offender lookup. On Kentucky VINE, a notification system that alerts people about a change in custody to particular inmates, Johnson’s status is listed as “out of custody” with a note to contact the holding facility for more details.
On the day that Johnson died, the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office made a Facebook post saying it had received word of a death row inmate dying at the Kentucky State Penitentiary, which is located in the western Kentucky county. The agency then noted that there was a “vacancy at our maximum security institution when the good people of Warren County decide to send [Kentucky State Police] Trooper Hayden Phillips’ cowardly murderer to this proper place.” The statement is in reference to 51-year-old Emonnie Branch Sr., who has been charged with murder of a first responder in Phillips’ death – but has not been found guilty or convicted on this accusation.
Johnson was one of more than 20 death row inmates housed at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Lyon County, which houses all of the commonwealth’s male death row inmates.
Johnson had appealed his sentencing multiple times over the past three decades, primarily arguing that he only pleaded guilty because he believed a deal was in place to take the death penalty off the table if he entered a guilty plea.
In 2022, he filed a petition with a federal district court arguing, in part, that he did not knowingly plead guilty and that a trial court failed to consider all mitigating evidence when he was sentenced to death. A district court denied this petition, and the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision earlier this year.
Johnson’s attorneys filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court in August asking the nation’s highest court to review these federal court rulings. However, Johnson’s attorney asked for the petition to be dismissed on Monday after his death.
While there are more than 20 people in Kentucky who are imprisoned on a death sentence, the state has not executed any death row inmates in nearly two decades. In 2006, multiple death row inmates, including Johnson, filed a lawsuit seeking to halt executions in Kentucky until the state reviewed its lethal injection protocol. The Franklin Circuit Court issued an injunction in 2010 preventing Kentucky’s Department of Corrections from executing death row inmates.
Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman has recently pushed for the state to resume executions. However, the state’s Supreme Court has ruled against some of his attempts to give the corrections department a pathway to carrying out the death penalty.
In August, Kentucky’s highest court denied Coleman’s attempt to have the 2006 lawsuit challenging the state’s execution protocols dismissed. Last month, the Kentucky Supreme Court also denied Coleman’s motion to have the 2010 injunction preventing executions lifted.
The average age of Kentucky’s death row inmates is just over 66 years old. Only one person has been sentenced to death in Kentucky since the injunction halting executions was first issued in 2010. Most of these Kentucky inmates awaiting execution were sentenced to the death penalty prior to 2000. People sentenced to death typically have to pursue all available legal avenues to appeal their case and sentence before a state executes them.
