Florida, Texas execute men convicted of murders

By Bill Cotterell and Jon Herskovitz TALLAHASSEE, Fla./AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Florida and Texas executed convicted murderers on Tuesday, with Florida using a new drug in its lethal injection procedure that has been challenged in court by death-row inmates who say it would leave them in extreme pain. Darius Kimbrough,40, was pronounced dead at the state prison in Starke, Florida, at 6:18 p.m. EST (2318 GMT), 18 minutes after the lethal injection procedure got under way. The execution of Kimbrough, which followed the rejection of his final appeal by the U.S. Supreme Court, was the 33rd in the United States this year. Texas shortly after that executed Jamie McCoskey, 49, who was convicted of kidnapping a couple in 1991 in Houston, raping the 19-year-old woman and stabbing her fiancé, Michael Dwyer, 20, to death. McCoskey's was the 15th execution by Texas this year. The woman, who authorities did not identify because she was a rape victim, survived the assault and identified McCoskey in a police line-up. Kimbrough was sentenced to die for killing Denise Collins, an aspiring artist, after he broke into her Orlando, Florida, apartment and sexually assaulted her. She was found barely alive on her bathroom floor in October 1991 and died days later. Kimbrough made a handwritten plea to the Florida Supreme Court questioning the use of DNA evidence in his conviction and a new sedative being used in executions in the state. The high court last week rejected his appeal as did the U.S. Supreme Court. His execution was the second in Florida using midazolam as the first of three drugs administered in lethal injections. The sedative, known commercially as Versed and commonly used as sedation for minor procedures, was adopted by Florida officials after the state reported dwindling supplies of pentobarbital, a barbiturate. The shortage was due to a decision by the drug's manufacturer to clamp down on sales for its use in executions, prison officials said. After the sedative is administered, the prisoner receives a second drug that acts as a paralytic agent and the third drug stops the heart. Last month, seven Florida death-row inmates sued the state, arguing midazolam was not an anesthetic. A federal court has asked for new complaints to be filed in their legal challenge, which claims the three-drug protocol with midazolam is unconstitutional because it could cause unnecessary suffering. At the Texas State Prison in Huntsville, McCoskey was executed by lethal injection and was pronounced dead at 6:44 p.m. CST (0044 GMT Wednesday), according to a spokesman from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The department said that in his last statement, McCoskey said: "If I had it to do again I would change Dwyer's parents suffering because I know they are. I know that is not going to eliminate the pain because I have a child." Texas has executed 507 prisoners since the reinstatement of capital punishment by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, the most of any U.S. state. (Writing by Kevin Gray; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Maureen Bavdek) (This Nov. 12 story was refiled to show that lawsuit challenging Florida's new lethal injection procedure is continuing)