Clarence Dixon To Be 1st Death Row Inmate Executed In AZ Since 2014

PHOENIX, AZ — The first execution warrant for an Arizona death row inmate in 8 years was issued by the Arizona Supreme Court Tuesday, Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced.

The warrant is for Clarence Dixon, who was convicted in 2002 for raping, strangling and stabbing to death 21-year-old Arizona State University student Deana Bowdoin in her Tempe apartment.

Dixon's execution will be set 35 days from Tuesday, according to a news release from the Attorney General's Office.

Joseph Wood, the last death row inmate to be executed in Arizona, was given 15 doses of a two-drug combination over two hours in an execution that his lawyers described as botched. Over the lengthy execution, Wood repeatedly gasped for air. After Wood's execution, Arizona announced that it would temporarily suspend executions as it reviewed what happened to Wood.

“Arizona has a history of problematic executions and has not executed anyone since the horrifically mishandled execution of Joseph Wood in 2014," Dixon's attorney Jennifer Moreno said in a statement. "The State has had nearly a year to demonstrate that it will not be carrying out executions with expired drugs but has failed to do so. Under these circumstances, the execution of Mr. Dixon — a severely mentally ill, visually disabled, and physically frail member of the Navajo Nation — is unconscionable.”

Arizona, among other states, has 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.

In July 2015, the state tried to import sodium thiopental, which had been used to carry out executions but was no longer manufactured by companies approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The state never received the shipment because federal agents stopped it at Sky Harbor Airport. Arizona later lost an administrative challenge to the seizure.

The Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry announced in March 2021 that it had finally obtained the drug pentobarbital, which would allow it to resume executions. But the Arizona Supreme Court put Dixon's execution on hold over concerns about the expiration date of the drug to be used in his execution.

A 2017 settlement over Arizona’s death penalty protocol said the state will only use chemicals in an execution with an expiration date that is after the date of the scheduled execution.

While seeking Dixon's execution last year, along with that of another death row inmate, prosecutors had said the shelf life of the drug to be used was 45 days, which was half as long as they previously thought.

The state, early this year, resumed its court efforts to move forward with executions and said it had done specialized testing and determined the shelf life of the drug to be at least 90 days.

The case of Bowdoin's murder, for which Dixon received a death sentence, initially went cold, but around 20 years later it was reopened and Dixon was identified as a suspect via DNA profiling. At that point, Dixon was already serving a life sentence for a 1986 sexual assault.

As of Tuesday, he had exhausted all of his appeals for the murder conviction.

There are currently more than 100 inmates on death row in Arizona and around 20 of them have exhausted their appeals. Many of the crimes for which they were convicted date to the 1970s and early 1980s, according to the Attorney General's Office.

In 1977, after he was implicated in an assault, Dixon was diagnosed with schizophrenia and found to be incompetent, according to his lawyers. Then-Maricopa County Superior Court Judge (and later Supreme Court Justice) Sandra Day O’Connor found Dixon not guilty of that assault by reason of insanity. O’Connor then directed the Maricopa County Attorney's Office to have Dixon committed, but the office did not do so, his attorneys said.

"He was then released into the community without any supervision, treatment or mental health services," Dixon's attorneys said in a statement. "The crime for which he was sentenced to death occurred just two days later."

The Associated Press contributed reporting.