A white supremacist convicted of racially motivated murders three decades ago in Florida has been executed by lethal injection.Mark Asay is the first white man in state history to be executed for killing a black victim, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The 53-year-old had been found guilty of two 1987 murders in Jacksonville. The execution took place at 22:22 GMT.It was the first time a new drug cocktail was used.A jury found that Asay shot his victims - Robert Lee Booker, a black man, and Robert McDowell, 26, a white-Hispanic man - on the same night after making racist comments.
Prosecutors said that Asay had hired McDowell, who was dressed as a woman, for sex, and shot him after discovering his gender.Since the state reinstated death sentences in 1976, 20 black men have been executed for killing white victims, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
His execution began with him being given etomidate, an anaesthetic never before used for a US execution, which will replace midazolam, a drug abandoned over fears that it was causing unnecessary suffering.