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<h6 id="ra-headline"><span style="color:#0d0101;"><strong>Florida to execute a white man for killing black person for the first time ever </strong></span></h6>
<h6><span style="color:#0d0101;"><strong>Mark Asay, 53, is scheduled to die by lethal injection after 6 p.m. today</strong></span></h6>
<h6><span style="color:#0d0101;"><strong>A jury found Asay guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and recommended the death penalty with a 9-3 vote.</strong></span></h6>
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<span style="color:#0d0101;"><strong>In 1988 he was convicted by a jury of racially motivated, premeditated murders of Robert Booker, 34, and Robert McDowell, 26, earlier in 1987</strong></span></h6>
<h6><span style="color:#0d0101;"><strong>Assay a white supremacist shot Booker, a black man, after making multiple racist comments </strong></span></h6>
<h6><span style="color:#0d0101;"><strong>Next he shot McDowell, who was dressed as a woman, after agreeing to pay him for oral sex</strong></span></h6>
<h6><span style="color:#0d0101;"><strong> Prosecutors say Asay shot McDowell six times after discovering his gender</strong></span></h6>
<h6><span style="color:#0d0101;"><strong>Both murders happened on the same day in 1987 downtown<span style="color:#0d0101;"> Jacksonvill</span></strong>e, Fla </span></h6>
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<article id="ra-body">For the first time in state history, Florida is expecting to execute a white man Thursday for killing a black person — and it plans to do so with the help of a drug that has never been used before in any U.S. execution.|After nearly three decades spent on Death Row Barring a stay,<br />
Mark Asay, 53, is scheduled to die by lethal injection after 6 p.m.<br />
Asay was convicted by a jury of racially motivated, premeditated murders in the 1987 shooting deaths of two men in downtown Jacksonville.<br />
The planned execution — Florida’s first since the U.S. Supreme Court halted the practice in the state more than 18 months ago — is expected to be carried out using etomidate, an anesthetic that has been approved by the Florida Supreme Court. Two other drugs also will be used.</p>
<h6 class="ra-caption"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-242448" src="https://konniemoments.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/mark-asay3.jpg" alt="Mark Asay3.jpg" width="800" height="971" />Florida death row inmate, Mark Asay, has spent 3 decades fighting his conviction for shooting two Jacksonville men in 1987. Asay is scheduled for execution tonight</h6>
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<p>Mark Asay made national headlines over the decades for being a white supremacist who killed two black men in one night, today he dies.<br />
He was convicted in 1987 murders of Robert Booker, 34, a black man, after making multiple racist comments, prosecutors said.<br />
23-year-old Mark Asay allegedly shot Booker after calling him a racial epithet.<br />
Asay’s second victim was Robert McDowell, 26, who was dressed as a woman, after agreeing to pay him for oral sex. Prosecutors say Asay shot McDowell, who was dressed as a woman, six times after discovering his gender.<br />
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.<br />
However, according to police and court records Asay was drinking with friends, and they decided to look for prostitutes after the bar closed.<br />
One of Asay&#8217;s friends was asking Booker about where to find prostitutes when Asay called Booker a racial epithet and shot him in the stomach. Booker ran off and was later found dead.<br />
Asay and a friend continued looking for prostitutes and agreed to pay McDowell, who was dressed as a woman, for oral sex. But Asay then shot McDowell six times.<br />
Booker was black and prosecutors said Asay believed McDowell was Black, even though he was actually half White and half Hispanic.<br />
A jury found Asay guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and recommended the death penalty with a 9-3 vote, a decade later in 1988.</p>
<h6><strong><img class="alignnone wp-image-242446" src="https://konniemoments.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/vittorio-robinson-left.jpg" alt="Vittorio Robinson (left) .jpg" width="797" height="463" />Vittorio Robinson [left], lost his father Robert Booker when he was shot by Mark James Asay 30 years ago in 1987 in a racially-related killing. &#8211; “I just couldn’t believe it,” he said, describing when he learned of his father’s death. “And then it dawned on me, there are actually still people out there that thought that way.”</strong></h6>
<p>While Asay would be the state’s first white man to be executed in Florida for killing a black man, at least 20 black men have been executed for killing white victims since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1976, according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center. A total of 92 Florida inmates have been executed in that time period.</p>
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<p>Opponents of capital punishment said much more needs to be done to make Florida’s criminal justice system more equitable.<br />
“This does nothing to change the 170-year-long history of Florida not executing whites for killing blacks,” said Mark Elliott, executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.<br />
Etomidate is the first of three drugs administered in Florida’s new execution cocktail. It is replacing midazolam, which has been harder to acquire after many drug companies began refusing to provide it for executions. The etomidate is 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.<br />
While the state’s high court has approved the use of etomidate, some experts have criticized the drug as being unproven.<br />
“It’s never been used in an execution before,” said Jen Moreno, a lethal injection expert who works as a staff attorney at the University of California, Berkeley Law School’s death penalty clinic. “There are outstanding questions about whether it’s going to do what it needs to do during an execution. The state hasn’t provided any information about why it has selected this drug.”<br />
State corrections officials defended the choice, saying it has been reviewed. The corrections department refused to answer questions from The Associated Press about how it chose etomidate.</p>
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<h2 class="ra-caption"><img class="alignnone wp-image-242428" src="https://konniemoments.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/mark-asay-2.jpg" alt="Mark Asay 2.jpg" width="875" height="657" /> Mark Asay, in court for one of his dozens of appeals</h2>
<p>“The Florida Department of Corrections follows the law and carries out the sentence of the court,” Michelle Glady, the Florida Department of Corrections’ spokeswoman, said in a statement. “This is the Department’s most solemn duty and the foremost objective with the lethal injection procedure is a humane and dignified process.”<br />
Doctors hired by Asay’s attorneys raised questions about etomidate in court declarations, saying there are cases where it had caused pain along with involuntary writhing in patients.<br />
But in its opinion allowing the drug to be used, the state’s high court said earlier this month that four expert witnesses demonstrated that Asay “is at small risk of mild to moderate pain.”<br />
Asay would be the first Florida inmate executed since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling found the state’s method of sentencing people to death to be unconstitutional. The court ruled that the old system was illegal because it gave judges, not juries, the power to decide.<br />
Since then, Florida’s Legislature passed a law requiring a unanimous jury for death penalty recommendations.<br />
In Asay’s case, jurors recommended death for both murder counts by 9-3 votes. Even though the new law requires unanimity, Florida’s high court ruled that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling did not apply to older cases.<br />
Asay will be the 24th inmate executed since Gov. Rick Scott has taken office, the most under any governor in Florida history.<br />
Booker’s son, Vittorio Robinson, who was 15 when his father was killed, told the Florida Times-Union newspaper in Jacksonville that his father’s death helped him realize that racism was still alive.<br />
“I just couldn’t believe it,” he said, describing when he learned of his father’s death. “And then it dawned on me, there are actually still people out there that thought that way.”</p>
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Florida to execute a white man for killing black person for the first time ever – White supremacist Mark Asay was convicted 30 years ago for racially motivated, premeditated killing of two men in Jacksonville
