PHOENIX — Arizona is on schedule to put its first inmate to death in eight years.
The state Supreme Court on Tuesday set May 11 for the execution of Clarence Wayne Dixon.
The warrant, signed by five of the justices — two others recused themselves — is good for 24 hours around May 11.
Jennifer Moreno, from the federal public defender’s office, said she and the lawyers there are “finalizing our legal options and will proceed accordingly.”
Dixon was found guilty of killing Deana Bowdin, an Arizona State University student, in 1978. She was found murdered in her bed with a macrame belt around her neck and blood on her chest.
While police found DNA, they were unable to match it to anyone.
The break came in 2001 when Tempe police matched it to Dixon who by that time was serving a life sentence in prison for a 1986 rape.
Dixon had lived across the street from Bowdin at the time of the measure.
His post-conviction attorneys made several efforts to block his execution. Moreno said there are still issues to be resolved and questions to be answered.
“Arizona has a history of problematic executions and has not executed anyone since the horrifically mishandled execution of Joseph Wood in 2014,” she said.
In that case, the state had to administer 14 doses of lethal drugs more than the protocol authorized. And it took Wood two hours to die.
On top of that, the state has had trouble obtaining new lethal drugs — and proving that the drugs have not expired.
“The state has had nearly a year to demonstrate that it will not be carrying out executions with expired drugs but has failed to do so,” Moreno said. “Under these circumstances, the execution of Mr. Dixon, a severely mentally ill, visually disable and physically frail member of the Navajo Nation, is unconscionable.”
Attorney General Brnovich said he sees the issue through a different lens.
“I made a promise to Arizona voters that people who commit the ultimate crime get the ultimate punishment,” he said in a prepared statement. “I will continue to fight every day for justice for victims, their families, and our communities.”
Brnovich said there are more than 100 inmates on Arizona’s death row, with about 20 who have exhausted all their appeals. He said many of the crimes go back to the 1970s and early 1980s.
Only one thing is left to be decided: whether Dixon wants to be killed with an intravenous injection or lethal gas.
That year, voters eliminated the use of lethal gas, replacing it with lethal injections. That follow gruesome reports of the execution of Don Harding, who took 11 minutes to die.
But that 1992 constitutional amendment, approved by a ratio of more than 3-to-1, preserved the right for those already on death row to choose either option. That includes Dixon and 16 others.
Moreno said the choice has to be made 21 days before the scheduled execution.
The warrant comes as some Jewish residents are trying to legally block the use of the gas chamber for future executions.
A lawsuit filed in February by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix and two of its members asks that a judge declare the use of lethal gas violates a state constitutional provision against cruel and unusual punishment.
But the organization also seeks to prevent the state from spending more taxpayer dollars, including those of Holocaust survivors, to expedite executing people with the same cyanide gas, called Zyklon B, that the Nazis used to kill millions of Jews.
Brnovich’s office has asked that the case be dismissed.
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