TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - Gov. Rick Scott has rescheduled the execution of a mass killer for Aug. 5.
Scott announced the new execution date for 65-year-old John Errol Ferguson on Tuesday. That's the same day the federal Court of Appeals in Atlanta lifted the stay that it had imposed last October.
The death row inmate was convicted of killing eight people in South Florida. Six victims died in a drug related, execution-style mass killing in Carol City in 1977. Two Hialeah teenagers were slain on their way to a church meeting in 1978.
Scott initially signed Ferguson's death warrant last fall, scheduling him to die Oct. 16. But appeals at the state and federal level kept the execution from moving forward.
