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Victim's parents watch killer die
By DARA KAM
Palm Beach Post Capital Bureau
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
RAIFORD — Florida's first execution by lethal injection since the procedure was halted 18 months ago went off seemingly without a hitch Tuesday as child killer Mark Dean Schwab slipped away tranquilly.
In the front row of the witness chamber, on the other side of the glass, sat Junny and Vicki Rios-Martinez, the parents of the 11-year-old boy, named after his father, Schwab raped and murdered in 1991.
The execution appeared peaceful, Vicki Rios-Martinez said at a news conference. "I only wish my son had passed this peacefully as well," she said, without bitterness.
"We should all be so lucky when it's our time," Junny Rios-Martinez added.
At 6:03 p.m., the curtains to the execution chamber opened slowly, revealing Schwab strapped into a gurney with leather cuffs around his wrists.
Twelve minutes later, a doctor pronounced him dead. Lethal injection normally kills within about 15 minutes.
Thirty-seven witnesses, including 12 members of the media, attended the execution, the first since a federal judge halted Schwab's execution in November.
Family members wore white T-shirts emblazoned with photos of the boy and the words "In memory of Junny Rios-Martinez" or "Junny Rios-Martinez In Loving Memory."
Schwab had accepted a shot of diazepam, an anti-anxiety drug, about a half-hour before the execution. He appeared calm and blinked at the ceiling when the curtains opened. The first wave of drugs was delivered via an intravenous tube connected through a window in the wall behind the gurney on which Schwab lay, his feet facing the window.
At 6:03 p.m., the team warden, Tim Cannon, asked Schwab whether he wanted to issue a final statement. He did not respond. Shortly afterward, his mouth went slack and his eyes never reopened.
At 6:07, Cannon shook Schwab, called his name and flicked his eyelashes to ensure that the sodium pentothal had taken effect. After two more drugs were administered, Cannon announced that "the sentence of the state of Florida vs. Mark Schwab was carried out at 6:15 p.m."
Outside Florida State Prison, about 50 anti-death penalty protesters and 20 supporters gathered beneath a large oak tree in a field across the street from where Death Row inmates are housed and put to death.
One held a sign decorated with fiery symbols reading, "Rot in Hell Schwab."
Department of Corrections spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger said there were no problems with the execution and that "it was considered humane and dignified."
Two IV tubes were inserted into each of Schwab's arms - one to deliver the lethal triple-drug cocktail and another as an alternate if any problems arose with the original.
The execution team had to stick Schwab's arm twice to find a vein, but that was considered normal procedure, Plessinger said.
During the execution, the family and witnesses remained nearly silent, occasionally huddling and whispering.
A month after being released early from a prison sentence he received for raping a 13-year-old boy, Schwab saw Junny's photo in a newspaper after the boy had won a kite contest. Schwab posed as a newspaper reporter, telling the family he wanted to write a story about Junny.
Although Schwab claimed another man had made him kidnap and rape the boy, he led police to a footlocker in rural Brevard County, where Junny's nude body was discovered.
Earlier Tuesday, Schwab met with his mother and aunt for several hours. He ate his last meal of two fried eggs, four strips of bacon, two sausage links, hash browns, buttered toast and a quart of chocolate milk at 8 a.m.
Schwab's execution was the first in Florida since the botched December 2006 execution of Angel Diaz, whose prolonged death led to a state-imposed moratorium and investigation.
A medical examiner said the executioner pushed the needles through Diaz's veins and into his muscles, causing him extreme pain. It took 34 minutes for him to die, more than twice as long as usual.
The investigation led the Department of Corrections to alter its procedure to check for consciousness after the first drug is administered.
In November, a federal judge halted Schwab's execution hours before it was to take place as the U.S. Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of lethal injection. In April, the high court ruled in a Kentucky case that the method is not cruel and unusual punishment and therefore passed constitutional muster.
Schwab was the 10th person executed in the United States since the Kentucky ruling and the 21st to die by lethal injection in Florida. He was the 65th inmate executed since Florida resumed capital punishment in 1979.
The Rios-Martinezes said they planned to return to their Brevard County home after the execution, and Vicki Rios-Martinez she would go back to work today.
"This reign of evil has come to an end. Now it's time for all of us to move on," she said.
