After spending nearly three decades on Death Row, Jacksonville killer Mark James Asay was executed Thursday evening, the state's first inmate to be put to death in more than 19 months and the first execution under a lethal injection procedure never used before in Florida or any other state.
Asay's execution at Florida State Prison was the first since a January 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision, in a case known as Hurst v. Florida, that effectively put the state's death penalty in limbo. He also was the first white man executed for killing a black victim in Florida.