Who Is Mark James Asay? Man To Be Executed With Experimental Drugs

The state of Florida is set to execute a man on death row Thursday night using controversial experimental drugs. Mark James Asay, 53, was sentenced to death in 1988 for the murders of Robert Lee Booker, a black man, and Robert McDowell, a transgender person of white or Hispanic ethnicity.

Asay was set to be executed with a cocktail of three lethal injection drugs. The first, a short acting sedative, has never been used before as part of an execution in the United States. The second drug would serve as a paralytic while the third, a heart-stopping drug, had only been used previously in an execution by accident.

Asay’s lawyers argued he was being treated like a “guinea pig” and that he would experience severe pain during death, thus violating the Constitution’s cruel and unusual punishment statute.

Prosecutors said the murders were racially motivated, a charge Asay has always denied. Police previously believed McDowell was a light-skinned black person and only recently admitted they had been wrong. Asay, who is white, admitted to killing McDowell but said it was not premeditated – and adamantly denied he had anything to do with Booker’s death.

“[McDowell’s death] just happened as I was having a meltdown apparently,” Asay told WJXT-TV, an independent station in Jacksonville, in an interview released Wednesday. “That’s all I can say. I knew Robert McDowell as Rene. 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 ass.’ But I never intended to murder him. It just happened.”

Ballistic evidence used to prove he committed both murders with the same gun has since been proven wrong, Asay told WJXT. Asay previously had tattoos that read “supreme white power,” but since had them removed. He told reporters he had “never been” a white supremacist and got the tattoos when he was jailed in Texas as a form of protection.

“I was 19 years old, forced to survive in a hostile prison environment and I got these tattoos in that environment so that I could blend in and I could be safe in that environment. They are not representative at all of who I am,” he said. “While it’s a poor choice, it’s a choice I made, and I can’t undo it.”

Appeals filed on behalf of Asay to stay his execution have been denied by the courts. Should Asay be executed, he would be the first white man executed for killing a black person in Florida since the state reinstated the death penalty in the 1970s.

Fighting back tears, Asay told WJXT that he wished to apologize to McDowell’s family.

“I’m very sorry for what happened,” he said. “Rene was actually a friend of mine, so… I don’t know what happened. I did not go out with intentions of having a problem with anybody. I just got drunk. I suppose, because of my internal emotional problems that I had, the alcohol just served as a catalyst to cause me to lose my mind to be perfectly honest. I was very disturbed myself.”