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State attorneys say Florida child killer's execution should go forward today
By Paul Flemming
news-press.com capital bureau
Updated 1:21 p.m.
TALLAHASSEE – Gov. Charlie Crist is solemn, yet certain, as the hour approaches for the first execution from a death warrant he signed.
Child rapist and murderer Mark Dean Schwab is set to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Schwab would be the 65th prisoner executed in Florida since the death penalty resumed more than three decades ago, the first in the state in 18 months after a moratorium following a lethal injection that went awry, and the first execution of Crist's administration.
"It's very difficult. I feel the weight of that duty," Crist said in a telephone interview this afternoon. "Yet I understand that justice requires it."
Schwab's attorneys have filed a final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to delay the execution. Crist said he expects the court to reject it.
"It's properly the most solemn thing the administration undertakes. We approach six o'clock with great seriousness" and understanding of what it represents to the family of victims and the justice it delivers to them, Crist said.
Crist witnessed an execution in 1998, while he was a state senator then known as Chain-Gang Charlie for his strict law-and-order policies. Leo Jones, convicted of the 1981 sniper shooting of Jacksonville police officer Thomas Szafranski, was executed March 24, 1998, in Florida's electric chair.
"My purpose was that I had spoken in favor of the death penalty and I wanted to see what it was. I thought it was the appropriate thing, as a state senator at the time, to do."
In 2000, Florida established lethal injection as the state's first choice for carrying out the death sentence after a series of mishaps with the electric chair, including condemned prisoners bursting into flames.
"One of the things I took away from it -- I drove over from Tallahassee, I knew I was going the next day, it was hard to sleep that night before -- but it was administered professionally," Crist said of Jones's execution.
Lethal injection, too, has had difficulties. Schwab's execution would be Florida's first since the botched lethal injection of Angel Diaz in December 2006. The needles that deliver the lethal three-drug cocktail missed Diaz's veins and sent the poison instead into his muscles. Diaz took about 34 minutes to die, more than twice as long as executions earlier that year.
Then-Gov. Jeb Bush declared a moratorium on executions and named a commission to study Florida's methods. That group, and the courts, last year approved new protocols that increase personnel and training for lethal injection and include safeguards that aim to assure the condemned prisoner is fully unconscious.
Crist said he has confidence in the new procedures.
"The department has worked very hard with others to develop appropriate protocols. I have faith and confidence," Crist said.
Florida's Roman Catholic bishops last week called on Crist to stop Schwab's execution, as they do before all executions.
"I've prayed about it," Crist said. "I'm sympathetic to their point of view, of course. I respect it. I have a different point of view. This is how I feel."
Crist has not called the family of Junny Rios-Martinez, the 11-year-old Cocoa boy that Schwab abducted, raped and murdered. Crist said he asked his staff if the family had asked to hear from him. They had not, Crist said, and so he has not reached out.
Crist will be in his Capitol office this evening, on a dedicated phone line to the death chamber at Florida State Prison where Schwab will be executed. Crist and his staff will monitor the execution from there and certify the death warrant he first signed last year before a U.S. Supreme Court state delayed Schwab's sentence in November.
Updated 10:56 a.m.: Attorneys say execution should go forward
TALLAHASSEE – Florida's lethal-injection methods have been thoroughly vetted and determined to be constitutional, so Mark Dean Schwab's execution should go forward this evening, argue attorneys for the state in response to a last-day appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"At all times since Schwab’s execution was scheduled, his execution was to be carried out using the lethal injection procedures put into place by the Florida Department of Corrections on August 1, 2007," wrote Senior Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Nunnelley in his response to Schwab's appeal. "Those procedures have not changed since their adoption and are the procedures that were upheld by the Florida Supreme Court in Lightbourne as well as in Schwab’s own case on two separate occasions."
Schwab, 39, is sentenced to death for the 1991 abduction, sexual assault and murder of Junny Rios-Martinez, 11, of Cocoa. Schwab murdered the boy about a month after getting out of prison for rape of another boy in 1987.
Nunnelley, arguing on behalf of Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, writes that Schwab is playing legal games.
"That is an abuse of process," Nunnelley wrote. "No new or different grounds for relief were alleged, and Schwab’s successive motion was properly denied as procedurally barred. . . . He does not get yet another bite at the apple."
In a petition to the high court this morning, Schwab's attorneys argue that a ruling earlier this year in a Kentucky case called Baze raises more questions than it answers about the constitutionality of lethal injection.
"Florida is a state with a long history of failed and disconcerting executions," the appeal of Schwab's lead attorney, Peter James Cannon of Tampa, says.
Schwab is scheduled to die at 6 p.m. His execution would be Florida's first since the botched lethal injection of Angel Diaz in December 2006. The needles that deliver the lethal three-drug cocktail missed Diaz's veins and sent the poison instead into his tissue. Diaz took about 34 minutes to die, more than twice as long as executions earlier that year.
McCollum and Gov. Charlie Crist will have open phone lines to the death chamber at Florida State Prison as the execution approaches. If Schwab's execution is to proceed, McCollum will have to certify there are no outstanding legal challenges remaining.
The U.S. Supreme Court must reject Schwab's appeal today for that to be the case. The court has procedures in place to act quickly on death-penalty cases.
Updated 10 a.m.: Schwab files last-minute appeal
TALLAHASSEE – Child killer and rapist Mark Dean Schwab has made a last-ditch appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to halt his scheduled execution.
In a petition to the high court this morning, Schwab's attorneys argue that a ruling earlier this year in a Kentucky case called Baze raises more questions than it answers about the constitutionality of lethal injection.
"Mr. Schwab is before this Court because of last Term's opinions in Baze and the many questions left unanswered by the plurality opinion," the petition said.
Schwab, 39, is sentenced to death for the 1991 abduction, sexual assault and murder of Junny Rios-Martinez, 11, of Cocoa. Schwab murdered the boy about a month after getting out of prison for rape of another boy in 1987.
"Florida is a state with a long history of failed and disconcerting executions," the appeal of Schwab's lead attorney, Peter James Cannon of Tampa, says. "Despite multiple revisions to its execution protocol, Florida still inadequately trains its execution team and injects the paralytic agent that Justice Stevens has condemned in commenting that humans are executed with a chemical that veterinarians believe too painful to have used in euthanizing Eight Belles" the thoroughbred horse that foundered at this year's Kentucky Derby and was killed on the track.
Schwab is scheduled to die at 6 p.m. His execution would be Florida's first since the botched lethal injection of Angel Diaz in December 2006. The needles that deliver the lethal three-drug cocktail missed Diaz's veins and sent the poison instead into his tissue. Diaz took about 34 minutes to die, more than twice as long as executions earlier that year.
Then Gov. Jeb Bush declared a moratorium on executions and named a commission to study Florida's methods. That group, and the courts, last year approved new protocols that increase personnel and training for lethal injection and include safeguards that aim to assure the condemned prisoner is fully unconscious.
Updated 10:19 p.m. Monday: State executions resume today with child killer
TALLAHASSEE — Condemned child rapist and murderer Mark Dean Schwab has ordered his last meal.
It will be served before noon today, ahead of his scheduled execution this evening.
“He’s calm and he’s following all instructions,” said Gretl Plessinger, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, on Monday.
Schwab, 39, is sentenced to death for the 1991 abduction, sexual assault and murder of Junny Rios-Martinez, 11, of Cocoa. Schwab murdered the boy about a month after getting out of prison for rape of another boy in 1987.
Schwab will visit with his mother and an aunt at Florida State Prison near Starke where he is set to be Florida’s 65th executed prisoner since the death penalty was reinstated more than three decades ago. During the final hour of a scheduled three-hour visit, Schwab and his family will be allowed to touch.
“This is one of the most solemn things you do as governor,” said Gov. Charlie Crist of the first execution of his administration. “You know, I believe in the death penalty, obviously, or I wouldn’t have signed the warrant. I think it will work fine and justice will be done.”
On Friday, a lower federal court rejected his request to seek a delay of his execution.
Crist and Attorney General Bill McCollum will be at the Capitol tonight with open phone lines to the execution chamber.
There have been no executions, however, since December 2006 when a botched lethal injection led to a state-imposed moratorium, since lifted.
