ARIZONA TO POSSIBLY EXECUTE TWO
Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed orders last week to move forward with the execution process of two offenders on Arizona’s death row.
Ariz. — Back in August 2020, the ADCRR (Arizona Department Of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry) found a lawful manufacturer of pentobarbital to use in lethal injection executions and ordered the drugs from them. In October 2020, Mark Brnovich wrote a letter to the governor saying that his office had also located a drug manufacturer for executions. On March 5 of this year, they finally received the drugs and the director of the ADCRR, David Shinn, sent a letter to Attorney General Mark Brnovich stating that they are ready to resume executions in the state of Arizona. Last week marked the first movement in terms of the execution process in Arizona in nearly seven years.
Brnovich notified the Arizona Supreme Court of the state’s intent to seek execution warrants for Frank J. Atwood and Clarence W. Dixon. He also asked the court to set a briefing schedule to govern the process so that the ADCRR can, “comply with its testing and disclosure obligations regarding the drug to be used in the executions.” If the Arizona Supreme Court complies with Brnovich’s schedule, he will file execution warrants for Atwood and Dixon 16 days before the conference date. Defense counsel for Atwood and Dixon will be allowed one day to respond after the warrant is filed and Brnovich will be allowed to respond to that. If the motions are granted by the Arizona Supreme Court, the executions of both Atwood and Dixon must be carried out at most 35 days after.
Under Arizona execution laws (specifically A.R.S. 13–757), both Atwood and Dixon are eligible to elect lethal gas as the method of execution, as the crimes they were sentenced to death for took place before Nov. 23, 1992. Arizona’s gas chamber hasn’t had a use since 1999 when the state executed German national, Walter LaGrand. His execution was also the last recorded lethal gas execution in the United States. Since then, the gas chamber has sat idle at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence, Arizona. A representative from the ADCRR has stated that the gas chamber is, “fully operational,” and ready to use. Meaning if either Atwood or Dixon so chooses to have their execution carried out by lethal gas, that shall happen. It could be the first execution by lethal gas in over 30 years.
FRANK JARVIS ATWOOD
Frank J. Atwood, 64, is one of the offenders pointed out as to be possibly one of the first people executed in Arizona since 2014. He has been on death row since 1987 and is among the 21 inmates who have exhausted their appeals in Arizona. He was originally paroled from a California prison, after being convicted of kidnapping charges, in May 1984. In violation of his Californian parole, he came to Tucson, Arizona.
On Sept. 17, 1984, Vicki Lynne Hoskinson was riding her bike on her way to mail a birthday card to her aunt. Hoskinson was allowed to go on her own by her mother, Debbie Carlson, to the mailbox. When Vicki didn’t come home for over 20 minutes, Carlson sent Vicki’s 11-year-old sister, Stephanie, to look for her. After searching, Stephanie found Vicki’s bike laying on the side of the road a couple of blocks away from the house and near the elementary school at which Vicki attended. Vicki had disappeared. A search ensued and a license plate reported by a coach at the elementary school at which Vicki attended traced back to Atwood and he was later detained at a mechanic shop in Kerrville, Texas.
Ten days after Vicki’s disappearance, Atwood was arrested and charged with one count of kidnapping for Hoskinson’s disappearance. In April 1985, a hiker found a small human skull in an Arizona desert. The rest of the skeleton had been scattered by animals but dental records confirmed that this was, in fact, Vicki Hoskinson’s body. Due to the state of her remains, the official cause of death couldn’t be determined nor could any traces of sexual assault. Frank Atwood was found guilty and sentenced to death on May 8, 1987.
During his almost 34 years on death row, Atwood has done many things. For instance, he got married and wrote six books, five of which have been published at the time of writing. As of 2012, he is one of the longest-serving death row prisoners in the U.S. He has claimed that police tampered with evidence found on his car but no physical evidence has been found of Vicki being in his car. Atwood finally exhausted his appeals in 2018 after being denied a writ of certiorari by the U.S. Supreme Court.
CLARENCE WAYNE DIXON
Clarence W. Dixon, 62, is the second offender pointed out by Attorney General Mark Brnovich as possibly the next person executed by the state of Arizona. Dixon is another one of the 21 inmates that have exhausted their appeals on Arizona death row. He has been in the Arizona prison system since 1978 but was only sentenced to death in 2008.
21-year-old Arizona State University student Deana Bowdoin was found raped, strangled, and stabbed to death at her Tempe, Arizona apartment on Jan. 7, 1978. Allegedly she was believed to have left a nightclub after midnight on that day. Before reaching her apartment, she picked up mail outside her apartment. It is not known if she was in her apartment or not when Dixon attacked. Dixon allegedly raped, tied a belt around her neck, stabbed her a total of three times in the chest, and left her body on her bed for it to be found. The killer was not found for a while and was labeled a “cold case.”
Dixon was in the Arizona prison system prior to being sentenced to death. In 1978, he was sentenced to a total of 20 years in prison for burglary and aggravated assault. He was then found guilty of four counts of sexual assault, one count of aggravated assault, sexual abuse, and kidnapping in 1986 resulting in a life sentence. It wasn’t until Tempe homicide detective Tom Magazzeni reopened the so-called cold case and advancements in DNA technology helped solve the crime in 2008. DNA evidence led to Dixon being the suspect for the crime. He was tried for the murder and was then sentenced to death on Jan. 24, 2008.
CONTROVERSY AND THE FUTURE OF ARIZONA EXECUTIONS
Due to the completely botched execution of Joseph Rudolph Wood in Arizona back in 2014, the state has had to adopt a new lethal injection protocol to make sure incidents like that won’t happen again. The state used a two-drug cocktail consisting of midazolam and hydromorphone to execute Wood. It was in an attempt to experiment with a new protocol to use in further executions, but it failed horribly and Arizona was put on an execution hiatus. The state had to find new drugs to use in execution and found them in July of last year.
The price that the ADCRR had to pay for the drugs was released last week, coming in at an immense $1.5 million. This was spent during a budget crisis for the ADCRR, so it has come under scrutiny by death penalty opponents. In a statement released by Dale Baich, an attorney for some of the inmates on Arizona’s death row, he states, “We are shocked to learn of the steps Arizona has taken to hide the facts related to its effort to carry out executions … For the state to spend $1.5 million on execution drugs is even more disturbing given recent reports about the budget crisis at the Department of Corrections … Surely there is a better use for this money than carrying out executions.”
The Arizona Supreme Court will most likely follow through with Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s attempt to execute Atwood and Dixon considering past executions. The method of execution will be up to them considering both are still eligible to elect lethal gas. Whether the executions happen this year or the next is not for certain, but the execution chamber in Florence, Arizona will remain idle until the next execution is scheduled.
