Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich is again asking the Arizona Supreme Court to set briefing schedules for the execution of death row prisoners Frank Atwood and Clarence Dixon.
Once briefing schedules are established, the attorney general said in a statement his office would file warrants of execution for both men, an action which starts a strict timetable for legal responses, testing of execution drugs, and the carrying out of the death sentences.
"Justice has been a long time coming in some of the most heinous crimes committed in our state,” Brnovich said in a statement. “It is our solemn duty to fulfill these court-ordered sentences on behalf of the victims, their loved ones, and our communities.”
Atwood, 65, was sentenced in Pima County in 1987 for the murder of an 8-year-old girl, Vicki Lynne Hoskinson. Dixon, 65, was convicted in 2008 for the 1978 murder of Deana Bowdoin, a 21-year-old senior at Arizona State University found dead inside her apartment with a belt around her neck.
The Arizona Supreme Court vacated the previously established briefing schedules in the summer of 2021 for Atwood and Dixon after the state admitted it had miscalculated the shelf life of the drugs to be used for lethal injections.
Brnovich says additional testing has now been conducted on the lethal injection drugs, "establishing that the pentobarbital to be used . . . will have a beyond-use date of at least 90 days."
Both men have exhausted their available appeals, according to the attorney general.
The state supreme court could set dates for the briefing schedules should it approve the motions from the attorney general. “If the Arizona Supreme Court grants the motions, Arizona will carry out the execution 35 days from the date the execution warrants are issued,” the statement said.
Because the crimes they were convicted of occurred before 1992, both men have the choice between death by lethal injection or the gas chamber. Documents show the Arizona Department of Corrections recently
refurbished its gas chamber and purchased chemicals to use it, but attorneys for Atwood and Dixon claimed the state acquired the wrong kind of cyanide.
An attorney for Dixon declined a request to comment for this story and an attorney for Atwood did not immediately respond.
, Jimmy Jenkins, January 5, 2022
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
