FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Arizona Department of Corrections shows Clarence Dixon, who was sentenced to death in the 1977 killing of Deana Bowdoin, a 21-year-old Arizona State University student, in Maricopa County. On Wednesday, April 13, 2022, prosecutors asked the Arizona Supreme Court to call off an upcoming hearing scheduled by a lower-court judge to determine Dixon's mental fitness to be executed.
Dixon’s lawyers have said their client erroneously believes he will be executed because police at Northern Arizona University wrongfully arrested him in a previous case — a 1985 attack on a 21-year-old student. His attorneys concede he was in fact lawfully arrested then by Flagstaff police.Dixon was sentenced to life sentences in that case for sexual assault and other convictions.
Prosecutors told the state Supreme Court that even though Dixon’s attorneys argued their client’s focus on the 1985 sexual assault conviction shows he was incompetent to decline his right to a lawyer, the courts in rulings after his murder verdict “found that Dixon’s focus on that legal challenge, though untenable, did not demonstrate a lack of competence.
The last time Arizona used the death penalty was in July 2014, when Joseph Wood was given 15 doses of a two-drug combination over two hours in an execution that his lawyers said was botched.