Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A federal appellate court has stopped the execution for now of a drug trafficker convicted of killing a Florida state trooper with a pipe bomb.
The 11th U.S. District Court of Appeal in Atlanta granted the stay to Paul Augustus Howell on Monday. He is scheduled to be executed Tuesday.
Howell’s lawyers are appealing a federal judge’s rejection of a last-ditch appeal. Chief U.S. District Judge M. Casey Rodgers, though, certified an appeal to the 11th Circuit.
The South Florida drug ring member was convicted of murdering Florida Highway
Patrol Trooper Jimmy Fulford in 1992. Fulford stopped a car for speeding in north Florida. He was killed when he opened a gift-wrapped microwave oven with the bomb inside after finding it in the vehicle.
Authorities say Howell intended the bomb kill two Marianna women because they knew too much about a drug-related killing.
This evening, the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee held vigils in five locations across the Panhandle to protest the death penalty and to pray for the victims of crime.
Pensacola’s vigil took place at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart at 12th Avenue and Moreno Street.
“We’re gathering here to pray for the end of the death penalty in Florida and also for the victims of crime and in this instance, trooper James Fulford and his family and friends and the pain they have gone through,” said Peggy DeKeyser, director of communications for the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee.
“And we are here also to pray for the person to be executed, Paul Howell, because as Catholics … we believe that all life is sacred from conception to natural death even those lives in which the person has done great harm and done heinous crimes.
The Pensacola vigil drew a handful of people who gathered in prayerful protest against the death penalty.
“I believe in the teachings of the church and the abolishing of the death penalty. Ending life is not the way to give justice to someone,” Sacred Heart parishioner Jerry Valanzano said.