Rev. Bill Breeden has called the January 2021 execution of Corey Johnson the worst moment of his life.
Breeden, a Unitarian Universalist minister who has served as a spiritual adviser to death row inmates since the 1990s, was present inside the Indiana execution chamber when Johnson received a lethal injection for seven 1992 Virginia murders tied to the drug trade. The reverend has witnessed multiple executions over decades of prison ministry, but Johnson’s death has haunted him ever since.
Johnson, 52, did not die quickly. Breeden said that the inmate heaved heavily several times and complained that his hands and mouth were on fire. The process stretched across roughly 15 minutes before medical staff pronounced him dead.
The physical suffering was only part of what made the execution searing for Breeden. Johnson’s family had gathered behind what was supposed to be a soundproof glass screen to witness the procedure. That barrier failed.
“The glass wasn’t really soundproof, as I found out,” Breeden said. “As soon as the execution started, when the guy said, ‘let the execution begin’.”
What followed shattered the chamber’s forced silence. “Corey’s brother, who he hadn’t seen in 29 years, stood up and started screaming, ‘I love you, bro! I love you, bro! I love you, bro!'” Breeden recalled. “He never stopped until Corey was pronounced dead.”
Johnson himself had prepared final words that balanced selflessness with accountability. Breeden, who had worked with the condemned man in the lead-up to the execution, shared what Johnson said in his last moments.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m okay, but remember these names,” Johnson began, according to Breeden’s account. “He listed the name of every one of his victims. He said, ‘I want to apologise to their families. I know you’re hurting so bad,'” the minister recalled. The victims’ relatives were positioned in an adjacent room, watching through glass, able to hear Johnson’s voice as he spoke.
Breeden has built his ministry around presence at the edge of death. American death row inmates in active capital punishment states may request spiritual advisers during executions, a role that combines prayer, religious comfort, and physical proximity during a person’s final minutes. The practice continues in states including Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, and Idaho, though California has held executions since 2019 under executive order.
The Johnson execution came amid broader national scrutiny of capital punishment methods and outcomes. Scientific questions have surrounded multiple cases, including that of Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in Texas in 2004 for a house fire that killed his daughters. A forensic expert later described the evidence against Willingham as rooted in outdated theories and folklore, according to previous reporting.
Johnson’s case carried its own weight of violence. The 1992 killings of seven people in Virginia during drug trade disputes led to his death sentence and more than two decades of appeals before the January 2021 date at the federal execution facility in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Breeden noted that Johnson had demonstrated remorse before facing the injection. The minister’s role placed him at the intersection of state violence, family grief, and a condemned man’s final attempt at accountability — a position that has left him carrying specific, unshakable memories.
The reverend’s testimony adds to documented accounts of botched or prolonged lethal injections that have fueled debate about execution methods. Witnesses to other procedures have reported similar scenes of extended death, visible suffering, and trauma rippling through observation rooms meant to keep execution participants separated from one another.