in his past. His former girlfriend said he that he had beaten her after accusing her of 'sleeping around'. Other friends testified that Johnson had attacked a man with a knife; aimed a gun at a neighbor during a confrontation; attempted to run a man over and had once run over a cat and then reversed over it to ensure that it was dead. A man testified that Johnson had responded, "So what?" when told that the victim in his murder trial was married. On May 6, 1996, Johnson was found guilty of murder. Two days later he was sentenced to death by lethal injection. As the verdict was read out, he turned and screamed obscenities at the Wetterman family. Aftermath and death After the verdict, Johnson was on death row at the Ellis 1 Unit located in Huntsville, Texas, for almost 10 years. He received several stays of execution and lodged numerous appeals. One of these appeals was a confession supposedly signed by Vest after the two were arrested. Johnson's attorney appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that Vest's confession had been improperly suppressed by the prosecutors. Police later explained that the two men had both been indicted as if they were the shooters; Vest's signature was to affirm that the indictment was correct and was not in any way a confession. The court's verdict was affirmed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 1997 and a judicial review appeal to the Supreme Court was denied in 1998. An application for a writ of habeas corpus was denied in 2000. Three other appeals and attempts at judicial review were lodged but all failed. Johnson's execution date was set for 6pm October 19, 2006. Johnson was put on suicide watch 36 hours before the execution, and he was checked every 15 minutes. Johnson refused a last meal. At 2:45am October 19, 2006, Johnson was found, unresponsive, in a pool of blood in his cell in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Polunsky Unit. He had sliced open his right jugular vein and an artery inside his right elbow with a razor blade attached to a Popsicle stick, tied on with dental floss. He had written on his cell wall in his own blood "I didn't do it". He was pronounced dead at 3:40 A.M. at a nearby hospital. Prison system spokeswoman Michelle Lyons said that 15 minutes before Johnson