Florida to execute man with untested cocktail of drugs despite botching fears

Florida is set to execute a 53-year-old convicted murderer with a drug never before used in a lethal injection.

If the execution is carried out, Mark James Asay would be first person to die by an injection using etomidate – an anaesthetic developed in Belgium in the 1960s.

The anaesthetic would be followed by rocuronium bromide, to paralyse him, and potassium acetate, to stop his heart. It would also be Florida’s first time using potassium acetate, and the second time it was ever used in the United States.

The use of a previously untested execution drug has raised concern from many experts.

"There are outstanding questions about whether it's going to do what it needs to do during an execution,” Jen Moreno, a lethal injection expert for the University of California, Berkeley Law School, told the Associated Press. “The state hasn't provided any information about why it has selected this drug."

Florida Supreme Court Justice Barbara Pariente accused the state of treating Mr Asay like “the proverbial guinea pig” in a dissenting opinion earlier this month. The use of the untested drug, she claimed, would amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

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The state’s high court says expert witnesses have testified that Asay is “at small risk of mild to moderate pain” from the drug’s use.

Even Janssen, the manufacturer that invented the drug in the 1960s, has spoken out against its use.

“Janssen discovers and develops medical innovations to save and enhance lives,” the company said in a statement. “We do not support the use of our medicines for indications that have not been approved by regulatory authorities."

It added: "We do not condone the use of our medicines in lethal injections for capital punishment.”

The state won’t be buying the drug from Janssen, however. Etomidate is off-patent, and several different companies produce a generic version. The state has not revealed the company from which it will buy the generic drug.

Many states have been forced to turn to new lethal injection drugs in recent years, as drug manufacturers have taken a stand against the death penalty. Florida is using etomidate to replace midazolam – a drug Pfizer Inc discontinued last year to prevent it being used in executions.

In April, an Arkansas execution was stayed after the drug supplier, McKesson, revealed it had provided the drug to the prison for medical purposes — not for executions.

Asay would be the first inmate to be executed in Florida since January 2016, when the US Supreme Court ruled the state’s death penalty process unconstitutional. He would also be the first white man in Florida to be executed for killing a black man since 1979.

Asay was convicted of killing Robert Lee Booker, a black man, and Robert McDowell, a latino man, in 1987. Prosecutors say Asay shot Mr McDowell, who was dressed as a woman, after hiring him for sex and discovering his true gender. He was sentenced to death in 1988.

“I have served 36 years of my life in prison,” Asay recently told NewsJax4. “If the purpose of prison is not accomplished now, it's never going to be accomplished.”

He added: “I'm not a violent person or a threat to society. But if the government is like, Well, we can't be sure,’ then I'm prepared to submit to the execution Thursday and go on and be at peace with my Lord’.”