MIAMI — Convicted child rapist and murderer Mark Dean Schwab was put to death at the Florida State Prison on Tuesday, the state’s first execution since a botched lethal injection 18 months ago raised concern that a condemned man had endured a “cruel and unusual” ordeal.
Schwab, 39, was executed for the rape and murder of Junny Rios-Martinez, 11, of Cocoa Beach. He killed the boy in April 1991, just a month after early release from a previous prison term for sexually assaulting a 13-year-old boy.
Schwab died at 6:15 p.m. EDT, said Erin Isaac, spokeswoman for Gov. Charlie Crist.
Attorneys for Schwab made a fruitless appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court late Monday, arguing that the last execution at the state prison near Starke in December 2006 was bungled, inflicting severe and prolonged pain in the death of 55-year-old Angel Nieves Diaz.
“Florida is a state with a long history of failed and disconcerting executions,” Schwab’s appeal said, referring to macabre incidents in the 1990s when the state’s electric chair, nicknamed Old Sparky, set fire to the heads of condemned men before they died.
The Diaz case, in which executioners missed the inmate’s vein and injected chemicals into muscle tissue, spurred then-Gov. Jeb Bush to impose a moratorium on executions and order a review of lethal-injection procedures.
