Fla. inmate executed for killing cop with bomb

STARKE, Fla. -- The man who built a bomb that killed a Florida Highway Patrol trooper in February 1992 was executed by lethal injection Wednesday evening after a judge denied his appeals last week.

Drug trafficker Paul Howell, 48, who was sentenced to die for the murder of Trooper Jimmy Fulford, was pronounced dead at 6:32 p.m. Wednesday at Florida State Prison.

Howell's appeals to delay the execution were dismissed last week after the inmate claimed that the sedative midazolam hydrochloride might not render him totally unconscious before the other two drugs - which cause paralysis and then death - were administered, reports the Orlando Sentinel.

The previous knockout drug, sodium pentobarbital, is no longer used in executions after the manufacturer decided to stop providing it, the paper said.

Twenty-two years ago, Howell rented a car and paid another man to deliver a gift-wrapped box to a woman in Marianna. The Sentinel reports that the box, which contained a bomb hidden inside a microwave oven, was meant to kill the woman, who Howell believed could have implicated him and his brother in a drug-related murder.

Along the way, Fulford pulled the hired driver over for speeding on Interstate 10 just east of Tallahassee.

The man gave Fulford a false name and birthdate and was arrested. Howell was called about the rental car and asked if the arrested man had permission to be driving it. Howell never warned the dispatcher the bomb was in the trunk.

According to the Sentinel, Fulford was killed when he opened the package after searching the vehicle.

Howell was the fourth death row inmate executed with the new combination of drugs, the paper reports.