25 August 2017 :
Mark Asay was put to death Thursday evening for two murders in 1987, the first time in the state's modern history a white man was executed for killing a black man. The execution was Florida's first in 19 months and was done with a three-drug cocktail that included an anesthetic, etomidate, never used before in a U.S. lethal injection, the Associated Press reports. According to CNN, the execution of Asay, 53, was carried out at 6:22 p.m. without incident, prison officials said. He made no final statement before his execution, reports say. Asay was sentenced to death in 1988 after fatally shooting two people in seperate incidents in a single night. Asay killed Robert Lee Booker, 34, a black man, after making multiple racist comments, prosecutors said. Asay's second victim was Robert McDowell, 26, who was mixed race, white and Hispanic. Prosecutors say Asay had hired McDowell, who was dressed as a woman, for sex and shot him six times after discovering his gender. To date, all 57 white prisoners executed in Florida in the modern era were condemned for killing at least one white or Latino victim. In that same time period, Florida has executed 28 black death-row prisoners, with more than 70% condemned for the interracial murder of at least one white victim. On August 21, Amnesty International issued a new report, USA: Death in Florida, saying that the Asay execution and Governor Rick Scott’s decision to remove Orlando State Attorney Aramis Ayala from 27 homicide prosecutions provided “a moment to reflect upon an often overlooked aspect of Florida’s history—that it was a leader in lynching in the South and slow to eradicate this phenomenon in the 20th century.” "It does make the case even stronger that there's this disparity gap that exists between black and white -- who gets the death penalty and who gets exonerated," Adora Obi Nweze, president of the Florida State Conference NAACP and an opponent of capital punishment, tells the Miami Herald. Asay was executed despite the Florida Supreme Court’s recognition that his death sentence—imposed by a judge after three jurors had voted for life—was unconstitutionally imposed and that the court mistakenly believed both of Asay’s victims were black when it upheld his death sentence for what it believed to have been two racially motivated killings. Asay’s execution has been described as a twist on Florida’s racially disproportionate use of capital punishment. His execution made him the first white defendant since the state brought back capital punishment in the 1970s to be put to death for the murder of any black victim. Etomidate is the first of three drugs administered in Florida's new execution mixture. It's followed by rocuronium bromide, a paralytic, and finally, potassium acetate, which stops the heart. It is Florida's first time using potassium acetate, too, which was used in a 2015 execution in Oklahoma by mistake, but has not been used elsewhere, a death penalty expert said. State corrections officials have defended the choice of etomidate, saying it has been reviewed. The corrections department refused to answer questions from The Associated Press about how it chose etomidate. (See also January 5, 2017 and August 21, 2017). Mark James Asay was the 1st inmate to be put to death this year in Florida, the 93rd overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1979, the 17th this year in the USA and the 1459th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.
(Sources: Cleveland.com, Tampa Bay Times, Miami Herald, Pam Beach Post, Washington Post, CNN, AP, 24/08/2017)
