Phoenix (AP) —Tuesday, the Federal Court of Appeals rejected a request to postpone the execution of Arizona prisoners for the first time in nearly eight years.
A decision by three judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals successfully plans to execute 66-year-old Clarence Dixon in 1978 in a 21-year-old murder conviction in a state prison in Florence on Wednesday morning. We are. Old Arizona State University student Deana Bowdoin. On Tuesday night, the Court of Appeals rejected Dixon’s lawyer’s request for a committee of more judges to hear the appeal.
Dixon’s remaining legal efforts deserve him to be executed mentally, and his psychological problems prevent him from reasonably understanding why the nation wants to end his life. Concentrated on his claim that he is.
The Arizona Supreme Court on Monday refused to consider the decision of a state judge who dismissed Dixon’s allegations, leading his lawyer to introduce similar allegations into federal court.
In rejecting Dixon’s allegations, US District Judge Diane Humeteva concluded that state judges applied the correct legal standards in assessing Dixon’s mental health.
Dixon was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but Humeteva wrote that the state judge reasonably determined that Dixon did not lack a reasonable understanding of why he was killed. ..
Dixon appealed Humeteva’s decision on Tuesday.
Dixon’s lawyer said clients falsely believed he would be executed because police at Northern Arizona University had unfairly arrested him in a previous case, an attack on a 21-year-old student in 1985. .. His lawyer admits that he was actually legally arrested by Flagstaff police.
In that case, Dixon was sentenced to life imprisonment for sexual assault and other convictions. DNA samples taken while he was in prison later linked him to the killing of Bowdin, which was unresolved at that time.
The prosecutor said there was nothing about Dixon’s beliefs that prevented him from understanding the reason for the execution, noting Dixon’s long-standing court submission.
Dixon’s lawyer found evidence that state court judges who considered the mental health of their clients were experiencing delusions from schizophrenia when seeking a suspension of the death penalty from the Federal Court of Appeals. And claimed that he could not understand why the death penalty was being executed.
Prosecutors argued that Dixon’s allegations had no merit. “The state court’s decision was rational based on earlier facts,” Jeffrey Sparks, chief attorney at the Attorney General of Arizona’s office, told the Court of Appeals.
Attorneys were “not guilty of madness” in the 1977 assault case in which Dixon was repeatedly diagnosed with delusional schizophrenia, experienced regular hallucinations for the past 30 years, and was sentenced by Maricopa at the time. Said it turned out to be. Judge Sandra Day O’Connor of the County Superior Court, almost four years before being appointed to the US Supreme Court. According to court records, Bowdin was killed two days after the verdict.
Officials said the bowed-in, found dead in her apartment, was raped, stabbed and strangled. Dixon had been charged with raping Bowdin, but was later withdrawn for prescription reasons. However, he was convicted of her death.
Blind and deteriorating health, Dixon will be the first to be sentenced to death in Arizona in nearly eight years, primarily due to the state’s recent execution problems nearly eight years ago.
The state said his lawyer had failed, saying that Joseph Wood had to administer 15 combinations of the two drugs over a two-hour period before he was sentenced to death in July 2014. The state is currently using only one medicine.