An Arizona man who brutally killed a college student over 40 years ago ate Kentucky Fried Chicken, a half pint of strawberry ice cream and drank a bottle of water before dying by lethal injection on Wednesday.
Clarence Dixon, 66, was Arizona’s first execution since 2014.
Lawyers for Dixon attempted to reverse the sentence earlier this week, arguing it would be unconstitutional to kill Dixon because he was mentally unfit to understand. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, suffered from hallucinations and was blind.
Despite this, a federal judge in Phoenix sided with the state’s conclusion that Dixon was competent. The US Supreme Court also denied a last-minute request to stop his execution.
Dixon was convicted in 2008 for the 1978 murder of Deana Bowdoin, a 21-year-old student at Arizona State University who was found dead inside her apartment with a belt tied around her neck.
‘The last forty-four plus years of reliving Deana’s brutal murder as well as enduring the trial and appellate litigation has been nothing short of horrific for our family,’ her sister, Leslie James, said in a statement obtained by The Arizona Republic.
‘As victims, the Arizona Constitution guarantees a prompt and final conclusion of this matter. Nothing about this case or my experience in the criminal justice system has been prompt,’ she said.
In the days leading up to his death, the method of lethal injection was questioned by his attorneys, who claimed that the state’s batch of the sedative used had expired. State attorneys denied that the drug had gone bad, and offered to mix up and test a new batch beforehand.
Dixon is the first person to be be executed in the state of Arizona since 2014, when the practice was suspended following a botched execution the Arizona Republic reported.
At the time, the state used a mixture of midazolam, a drug similar to Valium, and a narcotic called hydromorphone, during executions. The faulty lethal injection cocktail resulted in Joseph Wood’s execution taking a total of two hours. Those witnessing his death said he could be seen repeatedly gasping for air.
The two drugs mixed in Wood’s death had never been used before, and prompted officials to review the state’s death penalty procedures.
Dixon was the sixth person to be executed in the US this year. The state of Arizona is set to execute Frank Atwood in June for the 1984 murder of an eight-year-old whose body he left in the desert.
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