Arizona to Resume Executions

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich is moving forward to resume executions.  Jill Ryan of the Associated Press reports that the state’s last execution was in 2014 when murderer Joseph Wood was put to death.   Like several other death penalty states, Arizona has been unable to carry out death sentences due to pressure by the European Union and other anti-death penalty groups to block drug manufactures from selling their products to states for use in executions.  Last month, US News reported that the state had obtained pentobarbital, the preferred anesthetic used to euthanize condemned murderers. 

The Attorney General is seeking death warrants for two of the longest serving murderers on the state’s death row, Clarence Dixon and Frank Atwood.  A 2017 Ninth Circuit decision in Atwood v. Ryan describes the evidence supporting Atwood’s conviction for the September 17, 1984 kidnapping and murder of 8-year-old Vicki Lynn Hoskinson.  One Week after the girl’s disappearance Atwood was arrested for kidnapping her.  A year later, after Vicki Lynn’s remains were found in the desert, Atwood was charged with her murder. At trial witnesses testified to seeing Atwood driving his car with a little girl in the passenger seat on the day Vicki Lynn disappeared.  Other witnesses testified to seeing Atwood in cloths covered with blood later the same day.  Paint from the little girl’s bicycle was found on the front bumper of Attwood’s car and nickle from his car bumper was found on the bicycle.  Atwood had served prison terms in California for convictions of the sexual abuse of two children.  He had admitted that he did not think having sex with children was wrong and told one witness that he was considering “going out and picking up a child,” and that “this time he would make sure the child wouldn’t talk.”   After the jury found Attwood guilty of kidnapping and first degree murder, he was sentenced to death.   For 32 years, multiple courts have reviewed and rejected his error claims on direct appeal, and state and federal habeas corpus.

A 2011 Arizona Supreme Court decision in State v. Dixon, discusses Clarence Dixon’s arrest and conviction for the January 6, 1978 rape and murder of 21-year-old Deana Bowdin.  Bowdin, an Arizona State University student, was found dead in her Tempe, AZ apartment.  She had been raped, strangled and stabbed to death.  While forensic experts found DNA on her cloths and body there was no match at that time in the FBI’s DNA database.  The day before Bowdin’s murder, Clarence Dixon had been released from custody after a state judge found him not guilty by reason of insanity for assault charges following his arrest for hitting a teen-aged girl with a metal pipe in June of 1977.

In 2001 a police detective resubmitted the DNA samples found on Deana Bowdin to the FBI database resulting in a match with Dixon, who was serving a life sentence for the brutal 1985 kidnapping and sexual assault of a 21-year-old Northern Arizona University coed.  Detectives determined that on the day that Bowdin was murdered, Dixon was staying across the street from her apartment.  At trial, Dixon chose to represent himself resulting in his conviction of aggravated first degree murder, for which he was sentenced to death.  He had state-appointed counsel for his direct appeal and habeas corpus review, which concluded with a unanimous 2019 Ninth Circuit decision to deny his multiple claims of trial errors.

Both cases demonstrate why the death penalty should continue to be available for the worst murderers.