‘GUINEA PIG’

Florida Will Carry Out Execution With Never-Before-Used Lethal-Injection Drug

In state’s first execution of white man for killing a black man.

Florida on Thursday will put to death a man using a lethal-injection drug that has never before been used in a U.S. execution. Justice Barbara Pariente wrote this month—in her dissent from the Florida Supreme Court—that Mark James Asay, 53, is being treated as “the proverbial guinea pig” for etomidate, an as-yet untested death-penalty drug. Pariente argued the case violates constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Asay, who is white, was convicted in 1988 of killing two men: Robert McDowell, who was Hispanic, and Robert Lee Booker, who was black. It is the first time in Florida’s history that it will execute a white man for killing a black man.