TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP/WSVN) — The state of Florida will execute its first Death Row prisoner in more than 19 months Thursday, after the Florida Supreme Court refused to block the execution.
The court ruled 6-1 that the state can go ahead with the scheduled Aug. 24 execution of Mark Asay.
It will also be the first execution anywhere in the country using an untested triple-drug lethal injection procedure.
Asay, 53, was originally scheduled to be executed in March 2016, for the 1987 murders of Robert Lee Booker and Robert McDowell in Jacksonville.
The execution was put on hold after the U.S. Supreme Court found the state’s death penalty sentencing law unconstitutional because it gave too much power to judges instead of juries.
The Legislature has since twice changed the law, most recently this year when it required a unanimous jury recommendation for the death penalty.
Justices rejected several arguments that Asay made to block his execution, including his questioning of a new drug the state plans to use for lethal injection.
Thursday’s execution will make Asay the 24th Death Row prisoner put to death since Gov. Rick Scott took office in 2011. Scott has ordered more executions than any other governor of the state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
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