For the first time in 19 months, Florida has executed a prisoner — a white man accused of racially motivated murder — using an untested lethal injection formula. Authorities say 53-year-old Mark James Asay, the first white man in state history executed in Florida for killing a black man, was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m. Thursday at the state prison in Starke.
The 53-year-old had been found guilty of two 1987 murders in Jacksonville. A jury found that Asay shot his victims – Robert Lee Booker, a black man, and Robert McDowell, 26, a white-Hispanic man – on the same night after making racist comments.
It was the first time a new drug cocktail was used.
A jury found that Asay shot his victims – Robert Lee Booker, a black man, and Robert McDowell, 26, a white-Hispanic man – on the same night after making racist comments.
The US has seen several sloppily handled executions in recent years, with lawyers arguing the drugs failed to properly prevent pain during the process.
Not only was this the first execution in Florida in more than 18 months, but it was also the first since the US Supreme Court found the state’s method of sentencing to be unconstitutional. The high court ruled that judges held too much sway over the decision to hand down the death penalty.
Since then, the state legislature has changed the rules so that a jury must reach a unanimous verdict in order for a death sentence to be recommended to the court.
But the new law does not affect older cases, such as Asay’s.
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