On Wednesday morning, Arizona executed a 66-year-old man by lethal injection for the conviction of a 1978 killing of an Arizona State University college student. He was Arizona’s first execution since 2014.
Clarence Dixon was put to death at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence. In a process that took approximately 11 minutes, when he was injected with sodium pentobarbital.
His attorneys had initially argued against this method of execution based on the belief that the batch mixed in February had expired, which violated the state’s execution rules.
State attorneys rejected the claim and offered to test the potency of a newly mixed batch.
Dixon requested Kentucky Fried Chicken, strawberry ice cream, and bottled water for his last meal.
In 2008, Dixon was convicted for the 1978 murder and sexual assault of 21-year-old Deana Bowdoin, a senior at ASU.
She was discovered dead inside her apartment in Tempe, Arizona, with a belt around her neck. Bowdoin had also been raped and stabbed.
Dixon was charged with rape, but the charge was eventually withdrawn due to the statute of limitations, which in Arizona is seven years.
His lawyers argued that he was mentally unfit for execution because Dixon believed that he was being mistakenly executed for a case involving an attack on a 21-year-old student in 1985 and that police at Northern Arizona University unlawfully arrested him.
However, Dixon’s lawyers admitted that Flagstaff police had legitimately apprehended him.
Dixon received a life sentence for sexual assault and other undisclosed charges in that case.
DNA samples collected from him in prison tied Dixon to the murder of Bowdoin after state prosecutors in 2001 claimed they found DNA evidence. Bowdoin’s case had gone unsolved until that point.
Dixon was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia on multiple occasions, had frequent hallucinations, and was found “not guilty by reason of insanity” in a 1977 assault case by then-Maricopa county superior court judge Sandra Day O’Connor, nearly four years before her appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.
On the day of Dixon’s execution, protesters were present to advocate for the abolition of the death penalty.
The state advocacy director for Death Penalty Alternatives for Arizona, Kat Jutras, expressed her concern with Dixon’s execution 15 minutes before it occurred, citing his history of mental illness.
“The last 44 years, he hasn’t had any adequate treatment or access, and he’s been incarcerated during that time,” said Jutras right before the execution. “He’s not a danger to society, he’s more of a danger to himself. He’s enclosed in a room completely blind and has no idea what’s going on or what’s happening, and they’re going to execute him today.”
Dixon’s final statement criticized the Arizona Supreme Court for dismissing his appeals. He vowed always to declare his innocence in Bowdoin’s case.
“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 to the victim, according to a media representative.
