Arizona conducts first execution since 2014

Clarence Dixon, an Arizona man convicted of killing a student in 1978, was executed on Wednesday, marking the first execution in the state in eight years. 

Dixon, 66, died by lethal injection at the state prison in Florence. The whole process took about 35 minutes—longer than usual because the medical team had a difficult time finding a vein into which the drugs could be administered. 

After making an incision in his groin area, the team injected the drugs. His death was announced 10 minutes later by the deputy director with the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry, Frank Strada. 

Dixon was accused of killing Deana Bowdoin, a 21-year-old student of Arizona State University. She was found dead in her apartment after being raped, stabbed, and strangled with a belt. Dixon, Bowdoin’s neighbor, was accused of killing her. 

The case remained unsolved until 2008 when DNA technology matched Dixon to the murder. At the time, Dixon was already in prison, serving a life sentence for another sexual assault.

In the weeks leading up to his death, his lawyers tried to postpone the execution by claiming he was mentally unfit to be executed, reported The Associated Press. However, the judges and the Supreme Court rejected the argument.

“The Arizona Supreme Court should follow the laws. They denied my appeals and petitions to change the outcome of this trial. I do and will always proclaim innocence. Now, let’s do this (expletive),” Dixon said before he was executed, according to Strada.

“This is really funny — trying to be as thorough as possible while you are trying to kill me,” he said as the medical team was preparing to administer the injection.

"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.

Dixon is the sixth person to be executed in the U.S. in 2022. He is also the first person to be executed in Arizona since July 2014, when Joseph Wood was executed in an allegedly poorly executed process that took two hours.  

Arizona is scheduled to execute death-row prisoner Frank Atwood on June 8 for kidnapping and killing an 8-year-old girl.