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Supreme Court halts Florida execution

BY MARY ELLEN KLAS AND PHIL LONG

Four hours before convicted child killer Mark Dean Schwab was to die Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped his execution, giving the court time to review constitutional questions raised about the death penalty.

It was the second time in two days that Schwab's execution was blocked. A federal court in Orlando ruled Wednesday that the execution should not go forward. That ruling was overturned Thursday morning by a three-judge appeals panel in Atlanta.

Schwab was scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. for the 1991 rape and murder of Junny Rios-Martinez, an 11-year-old boy from Cocoa Beach in Brevard County.

He will remain on Death Row until the Supreme Court completes its review of two Kentucky cases to determine if the chemical concoction used in the lethal injection procedure is unconstitutionally cruel-and-unusual punishment. High court stays also have halted executions in several other states.

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, called the stay a sign that the court has imposed ``a clear national moratorium on lethal injections, at least until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on this issue.''

Florida has not executed anyone since Dec. 13, 2006, when workers carrying out the execution of Angel Diaz missed his veins as they were injecting the chemicals. Diaz took 34 minutes to die, twice as long as usual.

Florida uses the same drugs as Kentucky. Schwab's attorneys argue that the chemical cocktail violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Schwab was convicted of sexual assault in 1998 and served three years of an eight-year sentence before he was released in March 1991.

That month, a local newspaper published a picture of Junny after he won a kite contest. Schwab contacted the family and claimed he was a newspaper reporter writing an article on the boy.

A month later, he called Junny's school in Cocoa Beach, pretending to be the child's father, and asked that Junny meet him after school. The boy was then seen getting into a truck with a man.

Schwab was arrested after confessing to his aunt in Ohio that he had raped and kidnapped the boy. He had left the body in a footlocker in a rural part of Brevard County.

During the trial, it was revealed that after Schwab kidnapped Junny, he bound his hands and face with duct tape, cut off the boy's clothes and then raped him before strangling him.

The Florida Legislature subsequently passed the Junny Rios-Martinez Act, which prohibits sex offenders from early release from prison.