As Florida pre­pared to exe­cute Mark Asay (pic­tured) on August 24, the state’s death-penal­ty prac­tices came under fire from human rights groups, crim­i­nal jus­tice reform­ers, and one of the world’s largest phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies. Asay was exe­cut­ed despite the Florida Supreme Court’s recog­ni­tion that his death sen­tence — imposed by a judge after three jurors had vot­ed for life — was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly imposed and that the court mis­tak­en­ly believed both of Asay’s vic­tims were black when it upheld his death sen­tence for what it believed to have been two racial­ly moti­vat­ed killings. Asay’s exe­cu­tion also drew crit­i­cism from Johnson & Johnson, the world’s largest phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny. Its phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal divi­sion, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, con­demned the state’s pro­posed use of the drug eto­mi­date, which the com­pa­ny invent­ed a half-cen­tu­ry ago exclu­sive­ly for med­ical use. Asay’s exe­cu­tion has been described as a twist on Florida’s racial­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. His exe­cu­tion made him the first white defen­dant since the state brought back cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the 1970s to be put to death for the mur­der of any black vic­tim. In December 2016, African-American Florida Supreme Court Justice James Perry — in dis­sent­ing from the court’s deci­sion to lift a stay of exe­cu­tion for Asay — described this ​“sad sta­tis­tic” as a ​“reflec­tion of the bit­ter real­i­ty that the death penal­ty is applied in a biased and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry fash­ion, even today.” To date, all 57 white pris­on­ers exe­cut­ed in Florida in the mod­ern era were con­demned for killing at least one white or Latino vic­tim. In that same time peri­od, Florida has exe­cut­ed 28 black death-row pris­on­ers, with more than 70% con­demned for the inter­ra­cial mur­der of at least one white vic­tim. On August 21, Amnesty International issued a new report, USA: Death in Florida, say­ing that the Asay exe­cu­tion and Governor Rick Scott’s deci­sion to remove Orlando State Attorney Aramis Ayala from 27 homi­cide pros­e­cu­tions pro­vid­ed ​“a moment to reflect upon an often over­looked aspect of Florida’s his­to­ry — that it was a leader in lynch­ing in the South and slow to erad­i­cate this phe­nom­e­non in the 20th cen­tu­ry.” The Amnesty report not­ed that Ayala, the first African American to be elect­ed as a Florida state attor­ney, had cit­ed sys­temic racial dis­crim­i­na­tion as one of the flaws in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment that led to her deci­sion that pur­su­ing the death sen­tences in first-degree mur­der pros­e­cu­tions was ​“not in the best inter­ests of the com­mu­ni­ty” or ​“the best inter­ests of jus­tice.” It also high­light­ed her replace­ment, Brad King, a white pros­e­cu­tor whose ​“well-estab­lished” sup­port for the death penal­ty, Amnesty said, includ­ed ​“act[ing] as lob­by­ist-in-chief for the Florida pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al com­mu­ni­ty” in leg­isla­tive efforts to oppose requir­ing unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tions for death. Asay’s exe­cu­tion was the first ever in which a state has used the injectable seda­tive eto­mi­date. As part of its three-drug process, Florida then admin­is­tered rocuro­ni­um bro­mide as a par­a­lyt­ic drug and potas­si­um acetate to stop the heart. In a state­ment issued on August 21, Janssen said: ​“Janssen dis­cov­ers and devel­ops med­ical inno­va­tions to save and enhance lives. … We do not con­done the use of our med­i­cines in lethal injec­tions for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” The human rights orga­ni­za­tion, Reprieve, issued a state­ment say­ing that ​“Governor Scott should lis­ten to clear and unequiv­o­cal state­ments from Johnson & Johnson and oth­ers call­ing time on this dan­ger­ous mis­use of med­i­cines, and stay the exe­cu­tion of Mark Asay.” The state and fed­er­al courts denied Asay’s appli­ca­tions to stay his exe­cu­tion and he was put to death on August 24.

(“USA: Death in Florida,” Amnesty International, August 21, 2017; C. Johnson, ​“Johnson & Johnson says its drug shouldn’t be used to kill pris­on­ers,” The Washington Post, August 22, 2017; N. Baptiste, ​“Here’s Another Example of Why the ​‘Death Penalty System In Florida Is in Absolute Chaos,’ ” Mother Jones, August 23, 2017; M. Berman, ​“Florida pre­pares to exe­cute a death-row inmate for the first time in a year-and-a-half,” Washington Post, August 24, 2017.) See Florida, Arbitrariness, Race, and Lethal Injection.

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