Arizona | Judge Rules That Arizona Death-Row Prisoner Who Had Been Previously Found Legally Insane Is Competent to Be Executed

On May 3, 2022, an Arizona Superior Court judge ruled that death-row prisoner Clarence Dixon, whose execution is scheduled for May 11, is competent to be executed. Dixon has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, is visually impaired, and suffers from hallucinations and delusions. Shortly before the crime for which Dixon is scheduled to be executed, he stood trial for assault and was found “Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity” by then-Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sandra Day O’Connor.

Dixon was found incompetent to stand trial in 1977, when he was accused of hitting a stranger on the head with a metal pipe. He was treated in a state hospital, and at his January 1978 trial, O’Connor found him not guilty by reason of insanity. Civil commitment proceedings were scheduled to start within 10 days, but instead Dixon was released. The murder for which Dixon faces execution was committed 2 days after his release.

Dixon was not connected to the murder for 2 decades, and at his 2002 capital trial, he fired his court-appointed attorneys and represented himself. Dixon presented a convoluted argument that the charges were fueled by a government conspiracy. Dixon has filed multiple lawsuits and motions related this conspiracy theory since the mid-1990s, including a petition for writ of certiorari that was denied earlier this year.

In its May 3rd ruling on Dixon’s incompetency to be executed claim, Pinal County Superior Court Judge Robert Carter Olson applied Arizona’s statutory legal standard for determining competency, a standard that Dixon’s lawyers have claimed is unconstitutional. The court recognized that Dixon suffers from schizophrenia but noted expert disagreement about Dixon’s understanding of the rationale for his execution. The court also discussed Dixon’s intelligence and the absence of dementia as points supporting a finding of competence to be executed. Judge Olson ruled that Dixon has not shown that “his mental state is so distorted by a mental illness that he lacks a rational understanding of the State’s rationale for his execution.”

Eric Zuckerman, an attorney for Dixon, found it “deeply alarming” that the court relied upon “the discredited testimony of an unqualified expert who admitted to destroying the only recording of his interview with Mr. Dixon shortly before the hearing and to never asking Mr. Dixon why he believes he is being executed.” Dixon’s legal team is appealing the ruling to the Arizona Supreme Court.

At the competency hearing, Dixon’s attorneys presented evidence that Dixon is schizophrenic, has auditory and visual hallucinations, and has delusional thoughts. Dixon’s attorneys provided testimony from a psychiatrist with over 30 years of experience in diagnosing and treating psychotic disorders. The psychiatrist, Dr. Lauro Amezcua-Patino, visited and interviewed Dixon multiple times since 2011 and spent almost 40 hours reviewing documents. Dr. Amezcua-Patino confirmed Dixon’s earlier schizophrenia diagnosis and testified that he believed Dixon was delusional and irrational. Dr. Amezcua-Patino described Dixon’s long-held belief that he was being executed because of a government conspiracy. One of Dixon’s attorneys, Jennifer Moreno, summed up the argument in a statement saying, “[t]he execution of Mr. Dixon – a severely mentally ill, visually disabled, and physically frail member of the Navajo Nation – is unconscionable.”

The government rebutted this argument by presenting testimony from an expert witness who had never evaluated an individual’s competency to be executed before and who spoke to Dixon via video conference for 70 minutes. The State’s expert, Dr. Carlos Vega, is a former clinical psychologist who admitted he did “very little” research into how to perform a competency evaluation of this magnitude. Dr. Vega also admitted that he has never diagnosed or treated anyone with schizophrenia. Dr. Vega testified that he believed Dixon had deluded beliefs but was not delusional nor incompetent to be executed.

Before the hearing, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed a motion arguing that the court should not hold a competency hearing because it may delay Dixon’s scheduled execution. In response, Zuckerman said that “[t]he state’s attempt to overturn the lower court’s proper decision to grant a competency hearing to Clarence Dixon, who has a history of schizophrenia and previous findings of legal incompetency, undermines the legal process that will determine whether executing him would violate the Constitution.”

Dixon was also denied clemency by the Arizona Board of Clemency on April 27, 2022. Dixon had previously filed a complaint against the board, arguing that because 3 out of 4 of its members are law enforcement officers, he would not receive a fair clemency hearing.

Dixon is a member of the Navajo Nation, which has historically opposed the death penalty. On June 6, 2021, the Navajo Nation Attorney General Doreen McPaul asked Brnovich not to execute Dixon out of respect for Navajo traditions. McPaul wrote, “Navajo culture and religion holds every life sacred and instructs against the taking of human life for punishment,” McPaul went on to say that “[t]he death penalty removes the possibility of restoring harmony whereas a life sentence holds the opportunity to reestablish harmony and find balance in our world.”

Source: Death Penalty Information Center, Staff, May 6, 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

Florida | Former warden recalls botched electrocution that left him battling PTSD for 13 years and turned him into an abolitionist

Ron McAndrew anticipated it would be just another standard execution. He had been assigned to carry out the death of Cuban refugee Pedro Medina via electric chair within the confines of Florida State Prison. Fifteen years had passed since Medina's conviction for the murder of 52-year-old Dorothy James, and McAndrew's responsibility was to oversee the administration of lethal electrical currents to his brain. Having already supervised two previous executions using the identical procedure and raised in a community that strongly supported capital punishment, he expected a swift conclusion with justice delivered.

Two Executions In Six Hours: Florida Set For Historical Double Execution Tuesday

Florida is preparing to execute two death row inmates on Tuesday, July 28, in an action that would mark the state’s first double execution in more than 60 years. Former police officer James Duckett, 68, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 12 p.m., followed six hours later by 80-year-old Dominick Occhicone at 6 p.m. If carried out, these will mark the 39th and 40th executions under Gov. Ron DeSantis and the 11th and 12th in the state since the beginning of 2026. In response, Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) has launched petition and letter-writing efforts asking DeSantis to halt both procedures. The group has organized two public vigils outside Florida State Prison in Raiford, set for 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., contingent on whether stays are issued.

Florida executes Dominick Occhicone

Florida executes 2 men in a day. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has made Florida's death chamber the nation’s busiest at the end of his final term. STARKE, Fla. — Florida on Tuesday became the first state in nearly a decade to carry out two executions in a single day, the last an 80-year-old man who was the second-oldest inmate known to receive a lethal injection in modern U.S. history. Hours earlier, the state executed a former police officer convicted of killing a young girl.

Florida executes James Duckett

Double execution: 1st of 2 inmates is put to death in Florida Florida has executed James Duckett, a 68-year-old former cop convicted of killing an 11-year-old girl in 1987. The state is set to execute an 80-year-old man 6 hours later for a 1986 murder. Florida carried out the 1st double execution in more than 60 years, executing former police officer James Duckett and later scheduling the execution of 80‑year‑old Dominick Occhicone, amid Governor Ron DeSantis’s aggressive push to increase death penalties in the state. Florida has put to death the 1st of 2 inmates in the state's 1st double execution in more than 60 years amid an aggressive death penalty push by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Florida | 49 years on death row, killer of Bonita Springs teen learns death date

A Fort Myers man on death row for nearly five decades learned his execution date as Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his order Thursday, July 30. Harold Gene Lucas, then 24, shot and killed his 16-year-old girlfriend, Anthia Jill Piper in Bonita Springs on August 14, 1976. Lucas was 24 when he was charged in Piper's shooting death at her parents' home on Aug. 14, 1976. The execution is set for Sept. 1 in a state that has accelerated its pace under DeSantis the past two years, with a record of 19 executions in 2025. Piper was shot seven times by Lucas, who claimed to be intoxicated.

North Korea | 'I was only 9': North Korean defector recalls childhood memory of public execution

Kim Eun-joo was 9 years old when her teacher stopped their lesson and told the class to follow her outside. The children were marched to a public execution ground in North Korea. “I would cry even when our family dog died,” Kim said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. “But the first time I watched humans killing a human, I had no words for what I was feeling. It was the most brutal scene I have ever seen, in any movie or in real life.” The memory has stayed with her ever since. Now a human rights advocate after defecting from North Korea, Kim recently brought that childhood scene to the 9th World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris, where North Korea’s use of public executions and capital punishment was officially placed on the agenda for the first time.

USA | What happens in the final weeks before an execution? These reporters were inside the room.

The journalists behind ‘The Last 12 Weeks’ earned extraordinary access to a death penalty defense team—and faced difficult ethical choices Many defense lawyers are naturally cagey. They work in a pressure cooker, protecting their clients’ rights while fighting for the best possible outcome. And arguably, the stakes can’t get any higher than trying to save a client’s life. So no, defense lawyers don’t usually invite journalists into strategy meetings. But that’s what happened when Marshall Project reporter Maurice Chammah and Serial Productions senior producer Alvin Melathe spent the final few months before a Texas execution embedded with a capital defense team.

Iran erects iron gallows in Isfahan protest square

An iron gallows has been erected in an Isfahan square where protests erupted in January. Families of several of the 10 remaining prisoners sentenced to death have been summoned for farewell visits. An iron gallows erected in Ali-Khani Square in the central Iranian city of Isfahan has raised fears that the regime is preparing to publicly execute protesters arrested during nationwide demonstrations in January. Sources who spoke with Iran International said large numbers of security forces had been deployed in the area, while the families of several prisoners sentenced to death had been summoned to the prison for farewell visits.

19 July 1943 | Auschwitz's Largest Public Hanging: 12 Polish Prisoners Executed in Escape Reprisal

OSWIECIM, Poland — The SS carried out the largest public hanging in Auschwitz history on July 19, 1943, executing 12 Polish prisoners before other inmates as collective punishment for escapes and civilian contacts. The victims, all from the camp’s surveyors’ labor unit, were hanged on gallows built in front of the camp kitchen during an Auschwitz I roll call. The SS orchestrated this reprisal following prisoner escapes from the surveyors’ detail and unauthorized communication between inmates and civilians. Camp authorities used the recent escapes as a pretext to impose collective punishment.

Former Florida cop to be executed on same day as 80-year-old Pasco man

In an unprecedented move in the modern history of capital punishment, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday cleared the way for 2 executions to occur on the same day. DeSantis reset the execution of James Duckett, whose execution earlier this year was stayed amid efforts to secure DNA testing and analysis of evidence in his case. Duckett’s execution was reset for July 28. That is the same day previously set for the execution of Dominick Occhicone. Court records indicate that Duckett’s execution is scheduled for noon. Occhicone’s is set to follow at 6 p.m.

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