Arizona executes 1st death row inmate in nearly 8 years

[Stevicus]

Clarence Dixon: Arizona executes 1st death row inmate in nearly 8 years (fox10phoenix.com)

He's the sixth inmate executed in the U.S. this year.

FLORENCE, Ariz. (AP) - An Arizona man convicted of killing a college student in 1978 has become the first person to be executed in the state after a nearly eight-year hiatus in its use of the death penalty.

Clarence Dixon, 66, was put to death by lethal injection at the state prison in Florence for his murder conviction in the killing of 21-year-old Arizona State University student Deana Bowdoin. He is the sixth inmate to be put to death in the United States this year.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-minute delay of Dixon’s execution less than an hour before his execution began. His execution was set for 10 a.m. on May 11. His last meal consisted of Kentucky Fried Chicken, strawberry ice cream, and a bottle of water.

He was pronounced dead at 10:30 a.m., and according to Frank Strada, a deputy director with Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry, his final statement was:

The victim was murdered in 1978, but it wasn't until 2001 that they were able to link DNA evidence to Dixon.

FOX 10's Troy Hayden, a witness to the trial, described seeing Dixon grimacing as IVs were inserted into his body. It took around 25 minutes to get all of them in, and he insulted doctors while questioning their motives, Hayden said.

"This is really funny - you are being as thorough as possible as you try to kill me," Dixon reportedly said. "How twisted is this? You worship death, don't you…I know you are seeing this Deana. You know I didn't kill you."

The death row inmate never made eye contact with the witnesses and stared up at the ceiling during his execution. The drugs went into his body at 10:19, and he fell asleep shortly after.

Hayden the prisoner's very last words after being injected with the fatal chemicals were, "Maybe I'll see you on the other side Deana. I don't know you. I don't remember you."

Deana Bowdoin's sister, Leslie James, spoke with relief at Dixon's execution, stating that the DNA evidence pointed directly to him and that it only took 17 minutes for a jury to convict him in the 1978 murder. There was a one in a 17 octillion chance that it was anyone other than Dixon, she said.

"We should have been able to grow old together," James said. "All my mom ever wanted was that people would remember Deana. Please remember Deana Lynn Bowdoin."

James said the process took "way too long," and said little else about Dixon's execution, opting instead to discuss her memories with her sister.

"Why am I not surprised that he chose to use my sister's name?" James mentioned to members of the press.

In recent weeks, Dixon’s lawyers have made arguments to the courts to postpone his execution, but judges had so far rejected his argument that he is mentally unfit to be executed and had no rational understanding of why the state wanted to put him to death.

In arguing that Dixon was mentally unfit, his lawyers said he erroneously believed he would be executed because police at Northern Arizona University wrongfully arrested him in another case — a 1985 attack on a 21-year-old student. His attorneys conceded he was lawfully arrested by Flagstaff police.

Prosecutors said there was nothing about Dixon’s beliefs that prevented him from understanding the reason for the execution and pointed to court filings that Dixon himself made over the years.

Dixon declined the option of being executed by the gas chamber — a method that hasn’t been used in the United States in more than two decades — after Arizona refurbished its gas chamber in late 2020. Instead, the state plans to execute him with an injection of pentobarbital.

The state refrained from executions due to problems with the drugs used for lethal injection.

The state’s hiatus in executions was driven by an execution that critics say was botched and the difficulty of finding lethal injection drugs.

The last time Arizona used the death penalty was in July 2014, when Joseph Wood was given 15 doses of a two-drug combination over two hours. Wood gasped more than 600 times before he died.

States including Arizona had struggled to buy execution drugs in recent years after U.S. and European pharmaceutical companies began blocking the use of their products in lethal injections.

Arizona has found the drug pentobarbital from smaller compounded pharmacies that make the drugs on site.

Pentobarbital has many uses. In small doses, it can treat anxiety and seizures, as well as help patients relax before surgery. In higher doses, it's used for veterinary euthanasia and for death penalty executions.

"We know that it has been successful in taking the lives of prisoners. It's been used in numerous executions. The question always is the potency the purity, is it contaminated? If it's not pure, it's still going to be torturous," said Robert Dunham, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

But the drug has a short shelf life -- about 45 days and experts say it doesn't always work.

"The same amount of one drug may do what it's supposed to do with one person and not do what it's supposed to do with another. That is one of the inherent issues with capital punishment. Because prisons set a particular dosage and they don't vary it depending on the weight of the prisoner, where the prisoner's medical history is," explained Dunham.

"If they’ve done it properly, a single dose should work and the prisoners should become unconscious relatively quickly and should die anywhere in the range of six to 10 minutes," said Dunham.

Authorities have said Bowdoin, who was found dead in her apartment in Tempe, had been raped, stabbed and strangled with a belt.

Dixon, who was an ASU student at the time and lived across the street from Bowdoin, had been charged with raping Bowdoin, but the charge was later dropped on statute-of-limitation grounds. He was convicted, though, in her death.

Dixon was sentenced to life sentences in that case for sexual assault and other convictions. DNA samples taken while he was in prison later linked him to Bowdoin’s killing, which at that point had been unsolved.

Prosecutors said there was nothing about Dixon’s beliefs that prevents him from understanding the reason for the execution and pointed to court filings that Dixon himself made over the years.

Defense lawyers have said Dixon has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia on multiple occasions, has regularly experienced hallucinations over the past 30 years and was found not guilty by reason of insanity in a 1977 assault case in which the verdict was delivered by then-Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sandra Day O’Connor, nearly four years before her appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Bowdoin was killed two days after the verdict, according to court records.

Another Arizona death-row prisoner, Frank Atwood, is scheduled to be executed June 8 in the killing of 8-year-old Vicki Lynne Hoskinson in 1984. Authorities say Atwood kidnapped the girl, whose body was found in the desert northwest of Tucson.

Arizona has 112 prisoners on death row.

Another execution in Arizona is scheduled for June 8.

 

[The Hammer]

*sad*

 

[Koldo]

Clarence Dixon: Arizona executes 1st death row inmate in nearly 8 years (fox10phoenix.com)

He's the sixth inmate executed in the U.S. this year.





The victim was murdered in 1978, but it wasn't until 2001 that they were able to link DNA evidence to Dixon.



The state refrained from executions due to problems with the drugs used for lethal injection.





Another execution in Arizona is scheduled for June 8.

Oh boy. It is sad it takes so long.

 

[Twilight Hue]

The guy murdered someone.

Better late than never, but I really think the choice for execution should be left to the victims family and friends to decide. That way it will be true justice one way or another.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Oh boy. It is sad it takes so long.

I know. The late 70s?

 

[Shadow Wolf]

The guy murdered someone.

Better late than never, but I really think the choice for execution should be left to the victims family and friends to decide. That way it will be true justice one way or another.

How are you defining justice?

 

[Shadow Wolf]

A first world country that kills people like third world countries. How wonderful.

 

[Twilight Hue]

How are you defining justice?

By the victims family wishes.

 

[Stevicus]

By the victims family wishes.

This case was strange all the way around. He was already serving seven life sentences for previous crimes back in the mid 1980s, although he was apparently not suspected or at least not arrested for the 1978 murder, not until 2001 when someone was able to match his DNA with evidence from the murder.

But he was already in prison and going to stay there for the rest of his life. Granted, the guy was violent, a danger to society, and should have been kept locked up in any case. His lawyers said he had mental problems, but apparently he was declared sane enough to be executed (which is also kind of strange, when you think about it).

I'm not sure how much the victim's family's wishes should come into it. They have a right to make their statement for the court's consideration, but what if the family wanted to forgive him and have him set free? It might be irresponsible for a judge to do that, if he really is dangerous.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

By the victims family wishes.

That is vastly too subjective to have hopes of consistently rendering justice. It could be execution for remorseful people who accidentally killed someone and are very low risk of killing again, while another family declares they are a god-fearing Christian family and wants a serial rapist and murderer pardoned.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

This case was strange all the way around. He was already serving seven life sentences for previous crimes back in the mid 1980s, although he was apparently not suspected or at least not arrested for the 1978 murder, not until 2001 when someone was able to match his DNA with evidence from the murder.

But he was already in prison and going to stay there for the rest of his life. Granted, the guy was violent, a danger to society, and should have been kept locked up in any case. His lawyers said he had mental problems, but apparently he was declared sane enough to be executed (which is also kind of strange, when you think about it).

I'm not sure how much the victim's family's wishes should come into it. They have a right to make their statement for the court's consideration, but what if the family wanted to forgive him and have him set free? It might be irresponsible for a judge to do that, if he really is dangerous.

I find it scary that some people are that demanding about wanting death. Death has already happened, why must it happen again? What is fixed? What is solved? Why must we be so eager--more eager, even, in many cases--to want and demand death? Must we absolutely sink to the level of those like Ted Bundy and John Gacy and keep on killing and killing and chasing the "red pony?"

 

[Stevicus]

I find it scary that some people are that demanding about wanting death. Death has already happened, why must it happen again? What is fixed? What is solved? Why must we be so eager--more eager, even, in many cases--to want and demand death? Must we absolutely sink to the level of those like Ted Bundy and John Gacy and keep on killing and killing and chasing the "red pony?"

It's a very primitive form of punishment, although humans of today like to fancy themselves as more enlightened than in the past. After all, we don't crucify anyone or burn people at the stake anymore. We even stopped public hangings almost a century ago. The electric chair was supposedly "more humane" than those other punishments, although that's a relative statement. Then there was the gas chamber, although that's given way to lethal injection.

It's also treated very solemn and private these days, not like the raucous, rowdy affairs of bloodthirsty crowds gathering to watch someone die. However, I recall there was quite a crowd gathered outside the prison when Bundy was executed.

The way we do it now seems almost a hypocritical contradiction. It supposedly satisfies society's harsh, unyielding demand that "justice must be done," but it also answers misgivings about the death penalty being cruel and unusual. Since it's done in private with lethal injection, it implies a certain level of compassion and dignity, which is ostensibly enough to answer liberal criticisms and keep the death penalty on the books.

But there are other aspects which are kind of strange. I recall a case where a death row inmate had attempted suicide, and they made a great effort to save his life - just so they could execute him a few days later. How twisted is that? Some people get upset if a condemned prisoner "cheats the hangman," since they're denied the pleasure of doing it themselves.

I also recall a scene from the movie Judgment at Nuremberg where Marlene Ditrich's character is complaining that her husband (a German general) wasn't given the dignity of a firing squad. Instead, he had to be hanged, which also seems strange.

It seems that a bullet in the back of the head would be quick and easy, faster than lethal injection.

 

[metis]

*sad*

ditto

 

[pearl]

It seems that a bullet in the back of the head would be quick and easy, faster than lethal injection.

That would assume one bullet from one gun which would identify the executioner. I think the idea behind any execution is to protect the identity of the who fires the shot, releases the last lethal injection etc.

 

[danieldemol]

@Stevicus its a shame the US is still needlessly killing people for being the way nature made them in 2022.

In my opinion.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Since it's done in private with lethal injection, it implies a certain level of compassion and dignity, which is ostensibly enough to answer liberal criticisms and keep the death penalty on the books.

They just believe that compassion and dignity thing. All the lethal injection does is paralyze the person and spare the audience the shock of witnessing someone in absolute agonizing pain and fear that the person very much feels and experiences. It makes it so the person can't move or scream, and the audience gets to believe it was a humane, peaceful process performed by well trained medical professionals (that's also a lie) and they didn't sink to the killer's level.
But they did.