Today, August 24, for the first time in the history of the state of Florida a white man executed for killing an African American.
53-year-old Mark Asay after 18.00 will be executed using three drugs, one of which has never been used in lethal injections.
Esey was convicted of premeditated murder of two persons on the ground of racial hatred in 1987. He shot 34-year-old African-American Robert Lee Booker and 26-year-old Robert McDowell, who was half Hispanic. In McDowell Esey shot six times.
After the state returned the death penalty in 1976, about 20 blacks were executed for killing whites.
As for the drug, an anesthetic the state uses etomidate, then sentenced introduces the paralytic rocuronium bromide, and then potassium chloride that stops the heart.
Etomidate was approved by the court, but some experts criticize that choice.
«Before, it has never been used for executions,» says the NY Post Jen Moreno, an expert on injections, collaborating with the prison Berkeley. «There are unresolved questions about how it will operate during the injection. The state provided no information as to why he chose this drug».
The death penalty in Florida back in July of this year after 18-month break. It was caused by the fact that, in the opinion of the Supreme court of the United States, the procedure for imposition of the death penalty in the state had shortcomings. She «let the judges come to conclusions different from the conclusions of the court of the jury.» Now the decision on the death penalty must be unanimous.
In the case of Asay 9 jurors voted for the death sentence and 3 against. But the court of Florida ruled that the U.S. Supreme court’s decision does not apply to older cases.
The son of the slain Robert Booker, Vittorio, who in the year of the murder of his father was 15 years old, told the newspaper the Florida Times-Union that death gave him to understand that racism in America is still alive.
