Navajo man executed after 40 years in prison

Navajo man executed after 40 years in prison

By Joseph Budd

Native Sun News Today Staff Writer

 

Clarence Dixon, a 66 year old who had lived on death row for over 40 years, was put to death on Wednesday, centered on the death of a college student in 1978. The sentencing had divided the community in a couple of ways, for one, centering on the punishment, where his tribe was hoping for life imprisonment, while others felt he was no longer mentally fit, and unable to understand. Lawyers, had stated he had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, suffered from hallucinations and was blind and in frail health. A federal judge, however in Phoenix, sides with a state court’s conclusion that Dixon was competent, and the US Supreme Court denied his last minute request.

Dixon died from lethal injection at the state prison in Florence Arizona, confirmed by the Department of Corrections, also stated his last meal was Kentucky Fried Chicken, strawberry ice cream and bottled water.

In the last statement, Dixon condemned the Arizona Supreme Court for denying his appeals, said he would always proclaim his innocence and addressed his victim in the case, Deana Bowdoin.

“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, according to a media representative.

It took 11 minutes for the drugs to be administered, and he was pronounced dead at 10:30 am local time. Another media representative said he had made a gasp upon the drugs being injected, but did not move otherwise.

In the days before, questions were raised by his lawyers, who said that a batch of the sedative sodium pentobarbital mixed in February had expired and that its use would violate Arizona’s execution rules.

State attorneys denied the drug had gone bad, but offered to mix a new batch and have it tested for potency.

Arizona had halted its use of capital punishment in 2014 after the execution of Joseph Wood drew scrutiny, when officials and witnesses said it took two hours for him to die, and he gasped and snorted for much of that period.

The state had carried out Wood’s execution with a two-drug combination it had never previously used.

The incident prompted officials to review the state’s death penalty procedures, But after the long lull in executions, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich notified the state Supreme Court in April 2021 that he would seek execution warrants in the case of Dixon as well that of convicted murderer Frank Arwood, who is set to die in June. Brnovich, who is running for a senate seat as a Republican, has said he wants to “ensure” that the 21 people on Arizona’s death row whose appeals have been exhausted are executed before his term ends in 2023.

In his words, Brnovich stated “This is about the administration of justice and ensuring the last word still belongs to the innocent victims who can no longer speak for themselves.” he tweeted last year.

Dixon, who was sentenced to death in 2008 for the killing, was found to be raped, strangled and stabbed at his Tempe apartment in 1978, prosecutors said. DNA testing eventually linked Dixon to Bowdoin’s death.

“The last 44 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, Keslie James, Said in a statement in April. “As victims, the Arizona Constitution guarantees a prompt and final conclusion to this matter. Nothing about this case of my experience in the criminal justice system has been prompt.”

As noted, his tribe, the Navajo Nation which wrote a letter to Brnovich last year that “the death penalty removes the possibility of restoring harmony whereas a life sentence holds the opportunity to re-establish harmony and find balance in our world.”

Also the return of executions in Arizona had struck a nerve with members of the Jewish community, given that death row inmates who committed their crimes before November 23, 1992 have the option to select gas inhalation for their execution or the state’s default of lethal injection. The groups say killing people in a gas chamber is inhumane and it parallels the atrocities committed during the holocaust.

 

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