Update: The execution was carried out on schedule and completed at 6:15 EDT. AP story here.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Florida executions are scheduled to resume today following a de facto moratorium for the revision of procedures following the Diaz execution and the pendency of the Baze v. Rees litigation. Ron Word has this story for AP. First up is the very execution-worthy repeat child rapist Mark Dean Schwab. After getting out of prison for his first atrocity, he raped and murdered 11-year-old Junny Rio-Martinez in 1991. He has now lived 6 years longer since the crime than Junny's entire, much too short, life.

The revised protocol was upheld by the Florida Supreme Court in Lightbourne v. McCollum, SC06-2391, 969 So. 2d 326 (Nov. 1, 2007). In Baze v. Rees, Justice Ginsburg cited the Florida protocol as superior to Kentucky's for its additional safeguard of a consciousness check after the pentothal dose (dissent pp. 7-8).