A judge ruled that an Arizona inmate convicted of the 1978 murder of a college student is mentally fit to be executed next week, keeping what would be the first execution in the state in nearly eight years on track.
In a ruling signed just before midnight Tuesday and released Wednesday, Pinal County Superior Court Judge Robert Olson rejected an argument by defense attorneys that Clarence Dixon’s psychological problems prevent him from rationally understanding why why the state wants to end his life.
Dixon was convicted of murder for the death of 21-year-old Arizona State University student Deana Bowdoin.
Dixon’s attorneys said they will appeal the ruling to the Arizona Supreme Court.
Although Olson found that Dixon suffers from schizophrenia, the judge said that Dixon is rational and understands the proceedings of his case well enough to show that he is competent.
Dixon’s lawyers argued Tuesday in a Florence, Arizona, court that executing him would violate protections against execution for the mentally incompetent.
They said he wrongly believes he will be executed because Northern Arizona University police wrongfully arrested him in an earlier case: a 1985 attack on a 21-year-old student. His attorneys admit that he was, in fact, legally arrested at the time by Flagstaff police.
Olson rejected that argument, saying that, on the one hand, “it’s an elegant theory that could make all your legal problems go away; on the other hand, the chance of success with this argument was very unlikely (if not non-existent)…” but Dixon stood his ground.
One of Dixon’s attorneys, Eric Zuckerman, said in a statement that the judge relied on the testimony of an expert he called discredited and unqualified to conclude that Dixon was competent. He called that “deeply alarming.”
“We will ask the Arizona Supreme Court to apply the correct standard and ensure that Mr. Dixon is not executed while mentally incompetent in violation of the Eighth Amendment,” Zuckerman said.
Dixon was sentenced to life in prison in that case. for sexual assault and other convictions. DNA samples taken while in prison later linked him to the Bowdoin murder, which at the time had not been solved.
Prosecutors, who unsuccessfully tried to get the Arizona Supreme Court to cancel the mental competency hearing, said there was nothing in Dixon’s beliefs that prevented him from understanding the reason for the execution and pointed to court documents that Dixon himself made over the years.
Defense attorneys said Dixon has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia on multiple occasions, have regularly experienced hallucinations for the past 30 years and was declared "not guilty by insanity" in a 1977 assault case in which then-Maricopa County passed the verdict.
Superior Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, nearly four years before her appointment to the United States Supreme Court. Bowdoin was killed two days after the verdict, according to court records.
Authorities have said Bowdoin, who was found dead in her apartment, had been raped, stabbed and strangled. Dixon had been charged with raping Bowdoin, but the charge was later dropped on statute of limitations. However, he was convicted of killing him.
In addition to questioning his mental fitness, Dixon’s lawyers made another attempt Tuesday to stop his execution.
They filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to stay Dixon’s execution until prison officials show that the compound pentobarbital to be used in the execution has an expiration date.
About a year ago, prosecutors moved to seek the execution of Dixon and another death row inmate, but the state Supreme Court suspended the litigation over concerns about the expiration date of the drug to be used in the lethal injections.
In the new lawsuit, Dixon’s attorneys said prison officials gave them heavily redacted records that documented drug testsbut did not provide the assigned expiration date.
The Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry declined to comment on the lawsuit.
On Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court also issued an order that set June 8 as the execution date for another death row inmate, Frank Atwood, for the 1984 murder of 8-year-old Vicki Lynn Hoskinson. Authorities say Atwood kidnapped the girl, whose body was found in the desert northwest of Tucson.
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 his lawyers say was botched.
States, including Arizona, have struggled to buy drugs for execution in recent years after US and European drug companies began blocking the use of their products in lethal injections.
Arizona has 113 inmates on death row.
