TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida Governor Rick Scott is set to resume executions after a hiatus of more than eighteen months due to a ruling from the United States Supreme Court.
Scott rescheduled the execution of Mark Asay for August 24. Asay was originally scheduled to be executed last March 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 law unconstitutional because it allowed judges to reach a different conclusion from juries.
The Legislature has since twice changed the law, most recently this year when it required a unanimous jury recommendation for the death penalty. The Florida Supreme Court lifted the stay of execution late last year.
After a night of drinking at a bar, Asay, his brother, and a friend drove to downtown Jacksonville in the early-morning hours of July 18, 1987. When Asay and the friend arrived in downtown Jacksonville, he saw his brother sitting in his parked truck talking to Robert Lee Booker at the driver’s side window.
Asay approached the truck and began a verbal confrontation with Booker, despite his brother assuring him everything was alright. The confrontation escalated when Asay put his fingers in Booker’s face, at which time Asay uttered a racial slur, pulled a gun from his back pocket, and fatally shot Booker once in the abdomen. Booker ran from the scene, but died of the gunshot wound a short distance later.
Asay ran back to the truck where the friend was waiting, and when asked why he shot Booker, Asay said he had to show the man “who is boss.”
The two men continued to drive around downtown Jacksonville when they came upon Robert McDowell, who Asay believed had previously cheated him out of $10 in a drug deal, and wanted to get even. Asay arranged for McDowell to meet him and the friend in a nearby alley, and once there, Asay grabbed him by the arm and fatally shot him four times in the chest at close range.
Asay would be the 24th person executed since Scott took office.
(Photo credit: Chris Livingston)