We recently touched upon the racial conversation surrounding capital punishment in the case of Marcellus Williams, whose execution was temporarily suspended due to questions over new DNA evidence.

This time, it is Florida making headlines for its execution of a white man for killing a black person.

This is a huge deal because this execution will be the first of its kind in the state’s history, according to the Associated Press.

According to data gathered by Death Penalty Information Center, at least 20 black men have been executed for killing white victims since the state’s 1976 death penalty reinstatement.

Beyond the racial component, the killing will make history, for being the first U.S. use of a new lethal injection drug: etomidate, an anesthetic (along with two other drugs: rocuronium bromide, a paralytic, and potassium acetate, which stops the heart). The new drug being has been criticized as unproven in its effectiveness, and for causing “moderate pain” including “involuntary writhing.”

The inmate set to be killed is 53-year-old Mark Asay.

He faces execution for two premeditated and racially motivated murders he committed in Jacksonville in 1987.

The court found that Asay fatally shot 34-year-old black man Robert Lee Booker after verbally assaulting him with multiple racist comments.

His second victim was 26-year-old mixed race (white and Hispanic) man Robert McDowell. Asay had hired McDowell — who was dressed as a woman for a time — for sex and shot him six times after he discovered that McDowell was male.

"I just couldn't believe it," said Booker’s son Vittorio Robinson, in response to learning about his father’s murder. "And then it dawned on me, there are actually still people out there that thought that way." Robinson was 15 years old at the time his father his killed.

Asay was convicted by a jury and sentenced to death row. 

While this execution is making history, critics still believe we have a long way to go. "This does nothing to change the 170-year-long history of Florida not executing whites for killing blacks," said Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty executive director Mark Elliott.

Mark Asay is expected to be executed via lethal injection on August 24 after 6 p.m.