[3] Born on November 5, 1968, Corey Johnson, who originated from New York City, came from a dysfunctional family background and had a broken childhood overall, based on the case of his defense lawyers.

Johnson spent the remainder of his teenage years in various residential and institutional facilities before he reached the maximum age under the foster care system and was left to fend for himself.

[5] On February 19, 1992, 18 days after murdering Brown, Long, Armstrong, and Carter, Johnson suspected that a man named Linwood Chiles was secretly cooperating with the police.

[5] On January 4, 1992, Douglas Talley, an associate suspected of mishandling a drug transaction, was taken to the south side of Richmond and killed by both Tipton and Roane, suffering 84 stab wounds to his head, neck, and upper body.

[15] In separate trials, the fourth gang member Sandra Reaves was convicted of being part of the conspiracy to perpetuate cocaine trafficking, and sentenced to 16 years in jail without parole.

[18] The sixth and seventh gang members, Jerry R. Gaiters and Sterling Hardy, pleaded guilty to various charges and turned state witnesses against Johnson, Tipton, and Roane.

His two co-defendants, Roane and Tipton, were not included among the other four individuals — Brandon Bernard, Alfred Bourgeois, Lisa Montgomery, and Dustin Higgs — listed for execution.

[26][27] The huge spree of federal executions during the lame-duck period of Trump was known to be "unprecedented" and attracted widespread criticism from opponents of the death penalty.

[29] In late December 2020, less than a month before their execution dates, both Johnson and Higgs were tested positive for COVID-19, an infectious respiratory coronavirus that caused a worldwide pandemic since the start of 2020.

[37] On January 14, 2021, shortly after the loss of his final appeal, 52-year-old Corey Johnson was put to death by lethal injection at the USP Terre Haute.

[40] In a final statement issued after his execution, Johnson expressed that he was deeply remorseful of his actions and wanted each of his victims, whom he addressed by their names, to be remembered, and he apologized to the families of the people he killed back in 1992.

Johnson also briefly commented on his last meal in his last written statement, describing his pizza and strawberry shake as "wonderful" but lamented that he did not get the jelly-filled doughnuts he asked for, stating that this "should be fixed".

A day after Johnson's death sentence was carried out, Dustin Higgs, who ordered the murders of three women in Maryland, was executed after losing his final plea for clemency.

Breeden told the USA Today that Johnson was known to be a "gentle giant" and he was remorseful for his actions, and he was no longer the same person who was sentenced to death back in 1993.

[52][53] James H. Roane Jr. and Richard Tipton, Johnson's accomplices who were condemned to federal death row, were among the 37 prisoners to have their sentences commuted.

[54] The commutation of Roane and Tipton's death sentences sparked outrage from the former investigators, jurors, and prosecutors who handled the Newtowne Gang case.

Federal prosecutors Toby Vick and Buddy Parcell stated that Johnson and his gang were particularly violent offenders who deserved the death penalty for all the 11 murders they committed.