Title : Florida murderer says he's ready for his execution - but denies racism
link : Florida murderer says he's ready for his execution - but denies racism
Florida murderer says he's ready for his execution - but denies racism
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| Mark Asay |
A man who is set to become the first white Florida convict to be executed for killing a black man has said he is ready to die.
Mark Asay, 53, was convicted in 1987 of killing black man Robert Lee Booker and Hispanic cross-dresser Robert McDowell and has spent the years since waiting to be executed.
And on the eve of Thursday's execution, a tearful Asay opened up about the killings, his newfound religion, and why he feels he should either go free or be executed immediately to News4Jax.
Asay was convicted in 1987 of the racially charged murders of Robert Lee Booker, a black man, and Robert 'Rene' McDowell, a Hispanic crossdresser.
The then-23-year-old Asay was hauled in by police in July of that year after Booker's body was found under the porch of an abandoned house in Jacksonville.
McDowell's body was found at a crossroads nearby. Both men had been shot, and a candy-apple-red truck with a missing bumper was spotted leaving the scene of McDowell's killing.
That truck was traced to Asay, who has admitted to killing McDowell, a former friend of his, but denies murdering Booker, who was linked to him with ballistic evidence.
When asked if he had anything he wanted to say, Booker tearfully told the channel: 'Well, really, just that I'm sorry and things just got out of control.'
Saying that McDowell's death came as he was 'having a meltdown,' Asay said they had been friendly until the man took money from him.
'I knew Robert McDowell as Rene,' he said. 'I had previous encounters with him, and we were sociable, and he did take money from me one time.
'I had said, in my mind, "When I see him, I'm going to kick his a**." But I never intended to murder him. It just happened.'
Asay claims he was drunk to the point of unconsciousness when he shot McDowell six times, and that he doesn't 'know what happened.'
'I can only look at it in hindsight,' he said, as he began to choke up again. 'But I know that anybody that says I'm not concerned, don't know me.'
Prosecutors, who mistakenly identified the Hispanic victim as a light-skinned black man, painted the killing - and that of Booker - as a hate crime. Authorities have only recently acknowledged that mistake.
They also said that his white supremacist tattoos, including one that read 'supreme white power,' proved his prejudice.
However, he denies that he's a white supremacist and says he only got the ink done because it was the only way to survive 'in a hostile prison environment', when he was locked up for a burglary and auto theft, aged 19.
'They are not representative at all of who I am, but they are tattoos, and they're not easily removed,' he said.
'I have covered them up. I had a swastika on my elbow; I covered that up. I had an SWP on my arm; I burned it off. I've removed every racial tattoo I had, except for the ones that I can't reach.'
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| Florida's death chamber |
'While it's a poor choice, it's a choice I made, and I can't undo it.'
Killing McDowell is another choice; but Asay claims that the punishment he has received for that decision is far greater than it should have been.
He says that he never killed Booker - whom he admitted had cheated him in a drug deal - and that the ballistic evidence that connected him to the death has been proven to be wrong.
And, he says, the death penalty was imposed because it was painted as a racially motivated killing - even though the only victim he will admit to killing was Hispanic, not black, as prosecutors claimed.
He says the government was acting in 'good faith' at the time of the prosecution, but in the wake of those revelations, he wants to get his conviction changed to second-degree murder and be released for time served.
If that's not an option, however, he says he'd rather die.
'No, I don't want life in prison [even] if they had an institution that had Ramada Inn-style housing. Prison is prison. I have served 36 years of my life in prison.
'If the purpose of prison is not accomplished now, it's never going to be accomplished.
If the purpose is just to protect me from society and protect society from me, OK, I accept that, but I'm saying 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.'
Asay, who is a born again Christian, says that his faith is giving him comfort in the hours before his death, and that he is ready to die.
'I'm loved by the Lord. I'm 100 per cent confident that if I'm going to get relief here, it's because of the truth,' he said.
'And if I'm not going to get relief here, it's because the Lord knows that my life here on Earth will not be productive.
'Because I pray, and I say, "I've had all of the prison I want. So I want out of prison - through the front door or the back."'
Unfortunately for Asay, there looks to be no way out alive now. He was scheduled to die last year, until his execution was postponed at the last minute.
But last month Governor Rick Scott signed Asay's new death warrant.
And that means he'll be killed by lethal injection at 6pm on Thursday.
That will make him the first white man to be executed for killing a black person in the history of Florida.
His pending execution will be carried out for the first time with the help of a drug that has never been used previously in any US execution.
It is expected to be carried out using etomidate, an anesthetic that has been approved by the Florida Supreme Court.
Death penalty experts say the drug is unproven, while state corrections officials say the choice has been reviewed. Two other drugs also will be used.
The execution is Florida's first since the US Supreme Court halted the practice in the state more than 18 months ago.
Source: Mail Online, James Wilkinson, August 24, 2017
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
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