Gov. Rick Scott signed a death warrant Monday for a Jacksonville man, scheduling what would be Florida's first execution since January 2016.
Mark Asay was convicted of shooting and killing two people in Jacksonville in 1987: Robert Lee Booker and Robert McDowell. Scott set his execution for 6 p.m. on Aug. 24. He is one of 367 people on death row in Florida.
Scott previously had signed a death warrant for Asay, scheduling the execution for March 17, 2016. The Florida Supreme Court delayed the execution as lawmakers and courts grappled with what the federal court ruling meant for people already on death row in Florida.
The last person executed in Florida was Oscar Ray Bolin, who was given a lethal injection Jan. 7, 2016.
Five days later, the U.S. Supreme Court released a decision deeming the method Florida used to sentence people to death unconstitutional. State law required only seven of 12 jurors to vote in favor of the death penalty to allow judges to send a defendant to death row, giving too much power to judges and not enough to juries, the court ruled.
Courts have since vacated dozens of death sentences for defendants whose juries were not unanimous, sending the cases back to lower courts for new sentencing proceedings. Among them is Bessman Okafor, convicted of shooting and killing a witness who was supposed to testify against him in an Orange County home-invasion case.
But courts have also held that the new standard applies only to defendants whose cases came after a U.S. Supreme Court decision called Ring v. Arizona in 2002, in which the court first required juries in capital cases to be unanimous.
The jury in Asay's case recommended the death penalty by a vote of 9-3, which under the new law would be insufficient. But because his sentence was finalized well before the 2002 Ring decision, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that it is constitutional and that he is not entitled to a new sentencing hearing.
Scott has signed death warrants for 23 inmates during his tenure as governor, more than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
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