13 WTHR - Indianapolis News |Johnson reflects

Johnson reflects

Kevin Rader/Eyewitness News

May 24 - Gregory Scott Johnson is resigned to his fate. Twenty years ago he brutally stomped 82-year-old Ruby Hustlar to death.

"I am ashamed of who I was. I can only accept what I have coming. If I must die for it, then I am ready."

Sitting in a Michigan City prison holding area, he says his life was a waste. "At some point I reached the point where the only thing I cared about was my next buzz and damn everything else."

That attitude led him to kill his neighbor and ultimately to his own execution. "I was just a street punk. I don't know what I was looking for."

Twenty years has passed since Johnson committed murder. He says he has changed.

But the feeling of loss for the victim's family remains the same. Sharon Barker says, "It's always hard when somebody dies, you grieve and move on. But when it's something like this it's just different. It's different. I"ll never get over it."

Johnson's mother, Alice Newman, covered her heart as the state parole board voted against clemency for her son.

But like her son, she has had 20 years to prepare for this day. "I sometimes think that he'd be better off being put to death as he is staying in a little cell the rest of his life."

Barker told the Parole Board, "So we are at the end of the appeal process. I ask that this go forward. My family asks that. I ask that and grandma would ask that."

Johnson's execution is something everyone has come to accept.