JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Gov. Rick Scott on Monday ordered Mark James Asay to be executed on August 24 on his conviction for the shooting deaths of two men nearly 30 years ago.
His death would end an 18-month hiatus for the state's embattled death penalty.
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"I think the execution machine is going to get started again immediately," said Pete Mills, an assistant public defender in the 10th Judicial Circuit who also serves as chairman of the Florida Public Defenders Association Death Penalty Steering Committee.
Early this year, lawyers for Asay asked the Florida Supreme Court for a rehearing after a majority of justices ruled last year that a major U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down Florida's death-penalty sentencing system.
Asay was convicted in 1988 of the murders of Robert Lee Booker and Robert McDowell in downtown Jacksonville. Asay allegedly shot Booker, who was black, after calling him a racial epithet. He then killed McDowell, who was dressed as a woman, after agreeing to pay him for oral sex. According to court documents, Asay later told a friend that McDowell had previously cheated him out of money in a drug deal.
Asay was granted a last year stay after the Florida Supreme Court found that Florida's death penalty was unconstitutional because it did not require unanimous jury recommendations for execution. In 2016, Florida lawmakers rewrote the death sentencing law, requiring jurors to unanimously find that at least one aggravating factor existed before a defendant could be eligible for a death sentence and requiring at least 10 jurors in order for the death sentence can be imposed.
In October, the Florida Supreme Court struck down part of the new law, finding that it was unconstitutional because it did not require unanimous jury recommendations for death sentences, but in December it modified the unanimous rule to only apply to convictions made before 2002. It also lifted the stay on Asay's execution.
Asay's case has also involved a legal tangle over destroyed records and a lawyer who was the subject of an investigation ordered by Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Jorge Labarga.
The high court dropped the inquiry after Mary Catherine Bonner, who repeatedly missed critical deadlines in death penalty cases, resigned from a statewide registry that made her eligible to represent defendants in capital cases.
Marty McClain, a lawyer appointed to represent Asay after Scott signed a death warrant early last year, found that the Death Row inmate had gone for nearly a decade without representation. Many of the records related to Asay's case provided by Bonner were destroyed by insects or exposure to the elements, according to court records filed by McClain.
News Service of Florida reporter Dara Kam contributed to this story.