In Act of ​‘Christian Forgiveness,’ Tennessee Victim’s Daughter Asks Governor for Mercy for Her Mother’s Killer

A Tennessee mur­der victim’s daugh­ter is ask­ing Governor Bill Lee to hon­or their shared faith by spar­ing the life of her mother’s killer. In what they describe as an ​“excep­tion­al” clemen­cy plea, lawyers for Tennessee death-row pris­on­er Don Johnson (pic­tured) write that Cynthia Vaughn, the daugh­ter of Connie Johnson, has request­ed a meet­ing with Gov. Lee to tell him her sto­ry of ​“Christian for­give­ness” and ask that he com­mute Johnson’s sen­tence to life without parole. 

The clemen­cy peti­tion describes such a request as extreme­ly rare, say­ing “[w]e know of only one oth­er case in the his­to­ry of the State of Tennessee in which the child of the ulti­mate vic­tim has begged the Governor for mer­cy for the mur­der­er – and in that case clemen­cy was grant­ed to Gaile Owens.” Johnson’s clemen­cy peti­tion also stress­es his remorse and redemp­tion, explain­ing that he has become an Ordained Elder in the Seventh Day Adventist Church and now min­is­ters to his fellow prisoners. 

Vaughn and Johnson’s lawyers hope his sto­ry of Christian redemp­tion will be of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to Gov. Lee, whose cam­paign for gov­er­nor in 2018 repeat­ed­ly empha­sized his Christian faith.

In a let­ter to Governor Lee that is excerpt­ed in the peti­tion, Vaughn describes her change of heart about Johnson. For most of her life, she sup­port­ed his exe­cu­tion, pub­licly say­ing, ​“I want the freak to burn.” However, in 2012, she sought a meet­ing with Johnson in prison to tell him about the pain he had caused her. ​“After I was fin­ished telling him about all the years of pain and agony he had caused, I sat down and heard a voice. The voice told me, ​‘That’s it, let it go.’ The next thing that came out of my mouth changed my life for­ev­er. I looked at him, told him I could­n’t keep hat­ing him because it was doing noth­ing but killing me instead of him, and then I said, ​‘I for­give you.’” Forgiving Johnson, she said, has freed her from her anger and allowed her to live her life more ful­ly. ​“Letting go of anger has let me love more,” she wrote.

Johnson’s reli­gious con­ver­sion is the sub­ject of much of the clemen­cy peti­tion and includes numer­ous tes­ti­mo­ni­als about the pos­i­tive effect he has had on oth­er pris­on­ers. It also details his per­son­al jour­ney from the rou­tine beat­ings and psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse he endured from his father and in the juve­nile jus­tice sys­tem to what the peti­tion char­ac­ter­izes as his reli­gious redemp­tion. ​“What is most remark­able about Don Johnson’s life sto­ry is not that he end­ed up on death row fol­low­ing a love­less and hate filled child­hood, it is that he over­came that child­hood to become the man of God he is today,” his petition states. 

Prison min­is­ters and vol­un­teers wrote in sup­port of clemen­cy, describ­ing Johnson’s remorse and his impact on the lives of oth­ers. ​“Don has asked for for­give­ness of his sins and crimes he com­mit­ted years ago and by the grace of God has become a new per­son in Christ,” wrote Linda Faulk, a prison vol­un­teer who has known him since 2004. ​“Donnie is no ordi­nary per­son and he has unusu­al per­cep­tiv­i­ty. I am aware that the prison uses his tal­ents as a coun­selor and his unit has one of the best behav­ioral records in the State of Tennessee. Many peo­ple rejoice that he has served so well in spite of his envi­ron­men­tal cir­cum­stances,” said Dr. John L. DuBosque, a vis­i­tor and tele­phone advi­sor of Johnson’s since 1998. 

Johnson’s peti­tion con­cludes with a plea for a grant of mer­cy by the gov­er­nor: ​“Cynthia Vaughn, the per­son with the great­est claim on his life, deserves to have her for­give­ness hon­ored. She should not have her own heal­ing jour­ney end­ed with an unnec­es­sary and unwant­ed exe­cu­tion. Don Johnson should not have his jour­ney from the dark­ness into the light end­ed in the death chamber.”