A Texas man was executed on Tuesday evening for the fatal burning of an elderly clerk whom he ignited during a convenience store robbery over a decade ago.

Matthew Lee Johnson was sentenced to death for the 2012 murder of 76-year-old Nancy Harris, a great-grandmother who was doused with lighter fluid and set on fire at a store in Garland.

At the age of 49, Johnson received a lethal injection after 6 p.m. at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.

His execution was one of two scheduled for Tuesday in the United States. In Indiana, Benjamin Ritchie was also set to receive a lethal injection for the 2000 murder of a police officer.

These two executions are part of a series of four planned within approximately a week. On May 15, Glen Rogers was executed in Florida, and on Thursday, Oscar Smith is scheduled to receive a lethal injection in Tennessee.

David Dow, one of Johnson’s attorneys, stated that he would not pursue any final appeals with the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution. Previous requests by Johnson’s lawyers to stay his execution were denied by lower appeals courts. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied Johnson’s request to reduce his death sentence to a lesser punishment on Friday.

In earlier appeals, Johnson’s legal team contended that his death sentence was unconstitutional due to an improper determination of him being a future danger to society, a necessary legal finding for a death sentence. His most recent appeals claimed that the scheduling of his execution date was illegal.

Security footage captured part of the assault on Harris.

Severely burned, she managed to describe her assailant before succumbing several days after the attack on May 20, 2012. Johnson’s execution is set to occur exactly 13 years after Harris was assaulted.

There has never been any doubt regarding Johnson’s guilt. During his trial in 2013, he confessed to igniting Harris. He expressed regret and referred to himself as “the lowest scum of the earth.”

“I harmed an innocent woman. I took the life of a human being.

Johnson stated that he was unaware of his actions due to being under the influence after consuming $100 worth of crack cocaine. His legal representatives informed the jurors that Johnson had a prolonged history of substance abuse and had experienced sexual abuse during his childhood.

In legal documents, the Texas Attorney General’s Office indicated that Johnson’s numerous appeals have been attempts to postpone a legal death sentence.

“Thirteen years after the perpetration of Johnson’s crime, justice should no longer be postponed,” the Attorney General’s Office asserted in a court petition submitted last week.

Harris had been employed at the convenience store for over a decade, residing merely a block and a half away, as testified by her son, Scot Harris. She was the mother of four sons, grandmother to 11 grandchildren, and great-grandmother to seven.

Prosecutors indicated that Harris had only recently begun her Sunday morning shift when Johnson entered, doused her with lighter fluid, and demanded cash.

After seizing the money from the cash register, Johnson ignited Harris and calmly exited the store, as per court documents. Harris desperately attempted to extinguish the flames engulfing her and fled the store while calling for assistance, until a police officer intervened with a fire extinguisher to put out the flames on her body. Johnson was apprehended approximately an hour later.

Harris endured severe second- and third-degree burns affecting her head, face, neck, shoulders, upper arms, and leg, and she experienced significant pain in the days leading up to her death, as testified by a nurse and a doctor.

Should the execution proceed, Johnson would become the fourth individual executed this year in Texas, which is historically the state with the highest rate of capital punishment in the nation. If both executions scheduled for Tuesday are carried out, the total number of death sentences executed nationwide this year would reach 18.