Efforts To Stop Execution So Far Fail, AZ Inmate Set To Die Wednesday

PHOENIX, AZ — A barrage of court activity over the past few weeks have failed so far to stop or delay Arizona death row inmate Clarence Dixon's execution, scheduled for Wednesday. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit was set to hear an appeal from Dixon at 2 p.m. Tuesday, in which his lawyers planned to claim that he was not competent to face execution.

Dixon was convicted in 2008 of the 1978 rape and murder of 21-year-old Arizona State University student Deana Bowdoin. Dixon, 66, killed Bowdoin in her apartment in Tempe, according to prosecutors.

On Monday, the Arizona Supreme Court declined to overturn a lower court ruling that found Dixon competent to face execution, despite his diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Pinal County Superior Court Judge Robert Olson acknowledged in his ruling last week that Dixon has schizophrenia, but said that didn't stop him from understanding his upcoming execution or the reasons for it.

A federal court also denied a competency claim from Dixon Tuesday morning, according to his lawyer. That was the decision his lawyers appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and said they might take to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Dixon is the first Arizona inmate set to be executed since the 2014 lethal injection of Joseph Wood, which Wood's lawyers described as botched.

On Monday evening, Dixon's lawyers came to an agreement with the state regarding the chemicals to be used in Dixon's execution. In Arizona District Court earlier that day, Dixon's lawyer Jennifer Moreno had argued that the batch of pentobarbital meant for the execution had expired and could cause Dixon pain and suffering, violating his constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

After Wood's execution, during which he was given 15 doses of a two-drug combination over two hours, the state settled a 2017 lawsuit brought by other death row inmates. In the settlement, the state agreed not to use expired drugs in future executions and to test the drugs prior to using them.

During Monday's hearing in Arizona District Court, lawyers for the state argued that the pentobarbital to be used in Dixon's execution was not expired, even though when tested its pH was slightly outside the excepted range.

“Our point here is we simply want the state to follow its own protocol and use drugs that are not expired,” Moreno said.

Ultimately, the state agreed to have a new batch of pentobarbital compounded and to refrigerate it until the execution, and Dixon's lawyers said that concession satisfied their complaint to the court and dropped the case.

The Arizona Board of Executive Clemency on April 28 voted unanimously to deny clemency to Dixon after an hourslong hearing. During the hearing, Dixon's lawyers said that he should not have been allowed to represent himself during his 2008 trial, because he was not mentally competent to do so. Ultimately, the board agreed with the trial judge that Dixon was mentally competent to represent himself, despite his mental illness.

"There is not one legal, social or moral imperative for recommending reprieve or commutation of execution," said Deana Bowdoin' sister, Leslie Bowdoin James, during the clemency hearing.

Dixon was already serving seven life sentences after being convicted of a 1985 kidnapping and sexual assault of a Northern Arizona University student when he was implicated in Bowdoin's murder in 2000 through DNA evidence. By that point, he had a history of violence toward women, prosecutors said.

In summer 1977, Dixon was accused of hitting a teenage girl that he didn't know over the head with a pipe. He was ultimately found incompetent to stand trial, committed to the Arizona State Hospital for six weeks in late 1977 and released when doctors there said that he had become competent.

On Jan. 5, 1978, then-Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sandra Day O'Connor (later a U.S. Supreme Court Justice) found Dixon not guilty of the assault by reason of insanity. O'Connor ordered that Dixon be committed to a civil institution.

Instead, Dixon he was released with no treatment, supervision or mental health services, his lawyers said. Bowdoin was murdered on Jan. 7, 1978.