UPDATED
by Associated Press
February 7, 2013

A drug trafficker convicted of killing a Jefferson County trooper is asking the Florida Supreme Court to block his execution.

Paul Howell is scheduled to die by lethal injection February 26th.

Yesterday his lawyers asked justices for a stay of execution and filed a post-conviction appeal.

Howell is accused of killing Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Jimmy Fulford. Fulford was killed by an exploding pipe bomb in February 1992.

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Tallahassee, FL - January 19, 2013

Gov. Rick Scott has signed a death warrant for a man convicted killing a Florida state trooper.

The governor's office announced Friday that 47-year-old Paul Augustus Howell is scheduled to die by lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Raiford at 6 p.m., Febuary 26.

Trooper Jimmy Fulford was killed when he opened a booby-trapped package during a routine traffic stop on Interstate 10 in February 1992.

The pipe bomb, hidden in a gift-wrapped microwave oven, was intended to kill two women in Marianna because they knew too much about a drug-related murder in 1991. The death led to federal and state investigations that exposed a drug trafficking ring based in South Florida.

Howell was convicted of building the bomb and sentenced to death in 1995.