Latavious Johnson, an Arkansas death row convict, died of unexplained circumstances on Friday afternoon at the Varner SuperMax prison, according to the state department of prisons. He was in his forties.
The Arkansas Department of Corrections did not reveal Johnson’s cause of death and declined to speak further.
Johnson received a life sentence for the murder of his father, Johnnie Johnson, in 2000.
Johnson was condemned to death for the 2012 murder of Barbara Ester, a prison officer. According to court filings, Johnson fatally stabbed Ester three times with a shank, puncturing her heart. She had been looking into whether he had obtained a pair of unauthorised workout sneakers in prison.
According to court records, Johnson apologised for his behaviour in a statement supplied to police by his lawyers.
“I should have just given the shoes up, just said to hell with it, asked someone to send me some money and order me some more,” Johnson told a police investigator in an interview following the homicide, according to court papers. “It’s too late for all that now.”
Ester is remembered at a correctional facility in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.