The Arizona Supreme Court has issued an execution warrant for Clarence Dixon. This is the first execution warrant issued in Arizona in approximately 8 years.
On January 7, 1978, 21-year-old Deana Bowdoin, an ASU student, was raped, strangled, and stabbed to death in her Tempe apartment. Police couldn’t find her killer, and her case became cold. About 20 years later, a Tempe Police Detective re-opened the case and, with the technological advancement of DNA profiling, was able to identify a suspect. Clarence Dixon was already serving a life sentence in an Arizona prison for a 1986 sexual assault conviction. Dixon was indicted for Bowdoin’s murder in 2002. A jury found Dixon guilty and sentenced him to death. Dixon has since exhausted all of his appeals.
The execution will be set for 35 days from today. This will be the first execution Arizona has carried out since 2014.
Currently, there are more than 100 inmates on Arizona’s death row and approximately 20 have exhausted all appeals. Many of their crimes go back to the 1970s and early 80s.