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Florida Executes Edward Castro for the 1987 Murder of Austin Scott in Ocala

Castro, 50, was sentenced to death three times for the killing. He was the sixth man put to death in Florida in 2000, the state's highest yearly total since 1984.

Published

Illustration of white crosses in a small prison cemetery in the Florida pinewoods. Not an actual scene from the case.

Edward Castro met Austin Scott outside an Ocala apartment in 1987, drank with him inside, then killed him. On Thursday, December 7, 2000, Florida executed Castro for that murder.

He was put to death by lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Starke. He was 50, and the St. Petersburg Times reported that he apologized before the injection. Castro had been drinking heavily in Ocala for several days when he met Scott, introduced himself and went into the apartment with him, where he killed him.

It took three death sentences to carry out the punishment. A jury convicted Castro of first-degree murder in 1988 and he was sentenced to death. The next year the Florida Supreme Court upheld the conviction but ordered a new penalty hearing, finding that the jury had been given faulty instructions and had heard improperly admitted evidence of other crimes. Castro was sentenced to death again, and in 1992 the court sent the case back once more, ruling that the trial court should have disqualified the state attorney's office. At the third penalty hearing, in 1993, the jury voted eight to four for death. By then Castro had also been convicted of another murder, and the judge counted that conviction against him. The Florida Supreme Court affirmed the sentence on September 8, 1994.

Castro's was the sixth execution in Florida in 2000, the most the state had carried out in a single year since 1984, and the fiftieth since Florida resumed executions.

Sources