Florida's death penalty hiatus is slated to end Thursday, when the state plans to execute the first death row prisoner in more than 19 months.
But the
execution of Mark James Asay — a white supremacist accused of targeting black
victims — won't just be the first lethal injection since early 2016 in a state
that was killing death row prisoners at a record-breaking pace until a U.S. Supreme Court ruling
effectively put Florida's death penalty on hold.
It will
also be the first execution anywhere in the country using an untested
triple-drug lethal injection procedure.
Asay
has spent nearly three decades on death row after being convicted in the 1987
shooting deaths of two men in downtown Jacksonville.
Gov. Rick Scott initially
signed a death warrant for Asay in January 2016.
Florida plans to
execute Mark James Asay on Thursday. Asay, a white supremacist accused of
targeting black victims, will be the first Death Row prisoner executed in more
than 19 months.
(Florida Department of Correction / TNS)
But not
long afterward, in a case known as Hurst v. Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court
struck down the state's death-penalty sentencing system as unconstitutional
because it gave too much power to judges, instead of juries.
Lawmakers
revamped the law, but a series of court rulings kept the death penalty in limbo
until this spring, when the Florida Supreme Court lifted a hold on Asay's
execution, more than a year after it was supposed to take place.
It's
not unusual for death row prisoners, especially those with pending death
warrants, to launch myriad appeals in one of the judicial system's most
complicated arenas.
But
Asay's case is even more tangled than most:
--
Asay, now 53, spent a decade on death row without legal representation, a
violation of state law.
--
Dozens of boxes of records related to his case were destroyed after being left
in a rat- and roach-infested shed.
-- One
of his previous defense lawyers was the subject of an investigation by the
Florida Supreme Court, after a federal judge chided her for shoddy work.
--
Asay's current lawyer maintains that Attorney General Pam Bondi's office
hoodwinked him into agreeing to a delay by the U.S. Supreme Court, which could
ultimately make it more difficult for the condemned killer to have a review by
the high court.
The Florida Supreme Court recently issued a
rare mea culpa, acknowledging that it had for more than 20 years mistakenly
believed that one of the convicted murderer's victims was black.
Florida
Department of Corrections officials changed the three-drug lethal injection
protocol a year after Scott signed Asay's death warrant, adopting the use of a
drug never before used in Florida or in any other state for executions.
Asay
was convicted in 1988 of the murders of Robert Booker and Robert McDowell. Asay
allegedly shot Booker, who was black, after calling him a racial epithet. He
then killed McDowell, who was dressed as a woman, after agreeing to pay him for
oral sex. According to court documents, Asay — who bears white supremacist and
swastika tattoos — later told a friend that McDowell had previously cheated him
out of money in a drug deal.
A jury
found Asay guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and recommended the
death penalty with a 9-3 vote.
The
Florida Supreme Court last week rejected a major appeal by Asay, including a
challenge to the new lethal-injection procedure. This week, the court rejected
another attempt at a reprieve, after justices acknowledged the court had been
mistaken for more than two decades about McDowell's race.
Thursday's
execution would make Asay the 24th death row prisoner put to death since Scott
— who has ordered more executions than any Florida governor since the death
penalty was reinstated in 1976 — took office in 2011.
The
number of death warrants signed by Scott, during a shorter period of time than
other governors, was steadily growing until the Hurst decision put executions
on hold.
While
death penalty lawyers don't wish for any complications Thursday, they worry
that an uneventful lethal injection could prompt Scott to issue a flurry of new
death warrants.
“The
attention focused on this execution happens as a result of the lack of state
sponsored killings in the last year and a half. I suspect the execution machine
will start up again, these judicially approved medical homicides will become
the norm again, and news about them will move to the back pages, if they make
the paper at all,” Pete Mills, an assistant public defender in the 10th
Judicial Circuit who also serves as chairman of the Florida Public Defenders
Association Death Penalty Steering Committee, said in an interview.
Ocala-area
State Attorney Brad King, a veteran prosecutor and outspoken defender of the
death penalty, wouldn't predict what the impact of Thursday's execution would
be in terms of Scott.
But “if
this execution is carried out without any problems, without any stays by any
appellate courts, then I think the road would be clear for executions to begin
on a regular basis again,” King told The News Service of Florida in a telephone
interview Tuesday.
Florida
Supreme Court Justice Barbara Pariente, who dissented in last week's ruling on
Asay's appeal, raised concerns that the execution is being rushed. She wrote,
in part, that the state had thwarted attempts by Asay's lawyers, led by Marty McClain,
to obtain public records regarding the change in the lethal injection protocol.
“In its
rush to execute Asay, the state has jeopardized Asay's fundamental
constitutional rights and treated him as the proverbial guinea pig of its
newest lethal injection protocol,” she wrote in a lengthy dissent on Aug. 14.
Mills
raised similar concerns.
“If the
state is going to kill someone on behalf of the people of that state, I would
hope they would take the time to get things done right,” Mills said.
But
Asay has had “multiple trips through the appellate system,” the veteran
prosecutor King said.
“There's
nothing rushed about it,” King said.
Copyright © 2017, Sun Sentinel
No comments:
Post a Comment