NEW ERA

Florida Executes Convicted Killer With Never-Before-Used Drug

First execution in the state since January 2016.

The state of Florida on Thursday executed a convicted killer using an injected drug that has never been used before in the United States. The execution occurred just after 6 p.m. ET, hours after the Supreme Court denied a stay in the case. Mark James Asay, 53, became the first white man executed for killing a black man in the state since 1979—when the state brought back the death penalty—and the first individual put to death in the state since last January. A Florida Supreme Court justice argued that the drug, etomidate, amounted to cruel and unusual punishment because it allegedly causes pain immediately after it is injected.