11 minutes to die: Concern at lethal injection drug for death penalty

Mark Asay took 11 minutes to die.

The US state of Florida has executed a 53-year-old man convicted of two 1987 murders by administering a lethal injection that included a drug never before used in a US execution, officials say.

The execution was carried out at 6.22pm (local time) on Thursday at the Florida State Prison in Bradford County, about 80 kilometres southwest of Jacksonville, where the two murders took place.

Mark James Asay was the first white man to be put to death in Florida for killing a black man since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1979.

It took 11 minutes for Asay to die after he was injected with a lethal drug never before used in the United States.

Asay was killed using a drug called etomidate. It has replaced midazolam, which became harder to acquire for authorities after many drug companies began refusing to provide it for executions.

Asay was sentenced to death in 1988 for the killing of two men in separate incidents on the same day a year earlier. After using a racial slur during an argument, Asay shot Robert Lee Booker in the stomach.

He killed Robert McDowell by shooting him multiple times in the chest. Asay said later he believed McDowell had cheated him out of $10.

- AAP
Booker was black and McDowell was white. Asay's last meal consisted of his requested fried ham, fried pork chops, french fries, vanilla swirl ice cream and a can of Coca-Cola, said Ashley Cook, spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Corrections.

Asay is the 93rd person to have been executed in Florida since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in the country in the mid-1970s, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. That includes 91 men and two women.