Gary Johnson was executed by the State of Texas for a double murder committed during a robbery
According to court documents Gary Johnson would go to a ranch he use to work at with the intent to rob it and when James Hazelton, 28, and Peter Sparagana, 23, arrived the two victims would be shot and killed
Gary Johnson would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Gary Johnson would be executed by lethal injection on January 12 2010
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Gary Johnson FAQ
When Was Gary Johnson Executed
Gary Johnson was executed on January 12 2010
Gary Johnson Case
After more than 20 years on death row, convicted murderer Gary Johnson was executed Tuesday for the shooting deaths of two men at a Huntsville area ranch in 1986.
Johnson, 59, the second to die by lethal injection in Texas this year, was pronounced dead by Texas Depart-ment of Criminal Justice officials at 6:26 p.m., just 11 minutes after the lethal dose began at 6:15 p.m.
A Walker County jury sentenced Johnson to death in August 1988 for the murders of Peter Sparagana, 23, and James Hazelton, 28, at the Triple Creek Ranch, located about 10 miles west of Huntsville off state Highway 30.
Hazelton’s brother, George, was the only family member to observe Johnson’s execution, standing just a few feet away and watching through a glass window in silence.
At first declining offers to make a last statement, Johnson directed his comments to family members and friends in the personal witness room, including his daughter, a brother and sister-in-law and friends.
“Tell my family goodbye,” he said. “… you tell the rest of them what they did was wrong for letting me fall for what they did. I never done anything in my life to anybody.”
Hazelton, the ranch manager, and Sparagana, Hazelton’s brother-in-law, were called to the Triple Creek Ranch on the evening of April 30, 1986, by neighbors Bill and Shannon Ferguson, who observed Johnson and his brother, Terry, burglarizing the ranch.
Hazelton and Sparagana discovered Terry Johnson but didn’t see his brother, who opened fire with a .44-caliber Magnum pistol and shot Sparagana, according to evidence and statements from Terry Johnson.
Hazelton tried to run but was caught by Gary Johnson, who once worked for him.
“He put the gun in Hazelton’s mouth,” Frank Blazek of Huntsville, the prosecutor at Johnson’s trial, told the Associated Press. “Hazelton begged for his life and people across the way, in the nearby pasture, couldn’t see all this but could hear a man begging for his life.”
Shannon Ferguson, told the AP last week that she’s always “felt kind of responsible” for the two men being murdered because they wouldn’t have investigated if she hadn’t called.
But Ferguson also believes if she ignored the Johnson brothers’ suspicious activity, “I think they probably would have gone on and murdered more people.”
At the trial, Gary Johnson’s brother, Randy, testified that Gary Johnson told him of the events that transpired at the Triple Creek Ranch — that the pair were at the ranch to steal something when two men “got the drop on them.”
Johnson explained the reason for killing the two men to his brother, Randy, stating that “dead men don’t talk.”
Earlier Tuesday, Gary Johnson’s lawyers asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay his execution, saying he was nearly blind, in poor health and posed no danger to society if he was spared from the death chamber. The court rejected their plea.
Terry Johnson, now 62, took a plea deal with a 99-year prison term.
