In the state’s first conviction since 2014, an Arizona man was sentenced to death for the murder of a college student more than four decades ago. Deana Bowdoin, an Arizona State University student, was fatally stabbed and strangled in 1978 by Clarence Wayne Dixon. Dixon was executed at the state prison in Florence, Arizona. The execution was by lethal injection at 10:30 a.m. local time. Frank Strada, the state’s deputy director of corrections, announced the news.
Clarence Dixon’s defense counsel contended that killing him would be unlawful. He was mentally incompetent and thus unable to understand. Dixon had paranoid schizophrenia. He experienced hallucinations and was blind and in poor health. However, a federal judge in Phoenix was in support of the state court’s decision. On Tuesday, the United States Supreme Court dismissed a last-minute bid to stay his execution.
The drugs took 11 minutes to work
In his last statement, Dixon condemned the Arizona Supreme Court for denying his appeals, said he would always proclaim his innocence, and addressed the victim in his case, Deana Bowdoin. “Maybe I’ll see you on the other side, Deana. I don’t know you and I don’t remember you,” Dixon said in his final words.
The injected drugs took 11 minutes to work. The declaration of his death was made at 10:30 a.m. local time. Dixon’s lawyers investigated the method of execution in the days leading up to his death. They claimed that a dose of the sedative sodium pentobarbital prepared in February had expired and that using it would violate Arizona’s execution guidelines.
It was the first time Arizona gave the death penalty in the last eight years. The last execution was of Joseph Wood in 2014 when a two-drug cocktail injection took over two hours to come into effect, and witnesses reported he snorted and gasped before dying. Following that, Arizona ceased executions.