Florida Resumes Capital Punishment, Executes Child Rapist-Killer

July 1, 2008 10:07 p.m. EST

Starke, FL (AHN) - Florida resumed capital punishment on Tuesday, the first since the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling upholding lethal injection, with the execution of a inmate convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing a boy in 1991.

Mark Dean Schwab, 39, died at 6:15 p.m. or 12 minutes after chemicals were injected at the state's death chamber here. He had appealed his execution, claiming the procedure would cause pain and suffering much like what happened to the last executed inmate in 2006. The Supreme Court, however, denied the appeal hours before his execution.

The family of Schwab's victim, Junny Rios-Martinez of Cocoa, were among the 40 witnesses at the death chamber. Outside the facility, other relatives of the victim cheered upon hearing of Schwab's death while about 50 anti-death penalty advocates prayed 75 yards away.

Schwab was scheduled to be executed in November but a moratorium on lethal injection arising from a legal challenge on the method delayed the execution. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutinality of the procedure in April.

Schwab was the 10th inmate to be executed in the U.S. since the Supreme Court ruling and the 65th in Florida since the state resumed capital punishment in 1979.