Arizona Executes 76-Year-Old Man after Refusing DNA and Fingerprint Testing

In its third exe­cu­tion of 2022, Arizona exe­cut­ed Murray Hooper for a 1980 crime that was nev­er ana­lyzed using mod­ern foren­sic meth­ods. In the days pre­ced­ing his exe­cu­tion, his attor­neys con­tin­ued to request DNA test­ing and pur­sued new claims of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct based on evi­dence not revealed until Hooper’s clemen­cy hear­ing. All chal­lenges to his con­vic­tion and death sentence failed. 

In an inves­tiga­tive report pub­lished the day before Hooper’s sched­uled exe­cu­tion, Liliana Segura of The Intercept reviewed the issues of race, mis­con­duct, and inno­cence that have been cen­tral to Hooper’s legal chal­lenges. In an inter­view with Segura, Hooper con­tin­ued to protest his inno­cence and want­ed his sto­ry told even if he was exe­cut­ed. ​“Even if they got me, at least it’s out there,” he said. 

Hooper was sen­tenced to death in 1983 for the mur­ders of Patrick Redmond and his moth­er-in-law Helen Phelps. The pros­e­cu­tion alleged that Hooper and two code­fen­dants, William Bracy and Edward McCall, were hired to kill Patrick in a plan to take over his graph­ic design busi­ness. His con­vic­tion relied on the tes­ti­mo­ny of gov­ern­ment infor­mants and the eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny of Marilyn Redmond, Patrick’s wife, who was injured but survived. 

While Hooper was await­ing tri­al in an unre­lat­ed Illinois mur­der case, Marilyn Redmond was brought to Chicago to iden­ti­fy him in a line­up. Despite con­flict­ing descrip­tions of her attack­ers, Redmond picked Hooper out of the line­up. Hooper was sen­tenced to death in the Illinois case despite his alle­ga­tions of police bru­tal­i­ty that led to a false con­fes­sion. Eventually, the judge in the Illinois mur­der case would go to prison for cor­rup­tion, police offi­cers in the case would be impli­cat­ed in a pat­tern of police tor­ture, and Hooper’s con­vic­tion would be vacat­ed because of dis­crim­i­na­tion in jury selection. 

At his Arizona tri­al, Hooper’s attor­neys focused on the unre­li­a­bil­i­ty of Redmond’s eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, alleg­ing that she had been shown a pho­to before the Chicago line­up. In response to the eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion issues, pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es tes­ti­fied that Redmond had not been pre­sent­ed pho­tos. Hooper’s defense team also attempt­ed to impeach the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the gov­ern­ment infor­mants who tes­ti­fied. Despite these efforts, Hooper was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death. After his tri­al, evi­dence emerged that the pros­e­cu­tion had not dis­closed the pro­vi­sion of drugs, mon­ey, and con­ju­gal vis­its to gov­ern­ment wit­ness­es. These rev­e­la­tions led to relief and even­tu­al acquit­tal for Joyce Lukezic, accused of plan­ning the mur­ders, but because of Redmond’s eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny, Hooper’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence were not overturned. 

It was only in the lead­up to Hooper’s clemen­cy hear­ing that the pros­e­cu­tion revealed that Redmond had viewed a pho­to line­up before the in-per­son line­up in Illinois and that she could not iden­ti­fy Hooper from the pho­to line­up. When defense attor­neys sought relief because this with­held evi­dence sup­port­ed ear­li­er claims about the unre­li­a­bil­i­ty of eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny, the pros­e­cu­tion claimed that a mis­take had been made and that no pho­to lineup existed. 

Defense attor­neys had also pur­sued DNA and fin­ger­print test­ing of items at the crime scene, cit­ing a recent Arizona law expand­ing access to test­ing in old cas­es. All requests for test­ing were denied.

At Hooper’s clemen­cy hear­ing, defense attor­neys con­tin­ued to focus on his inno­cence claim: pre­sent­ing tes­ti­mo­ny about unre­li­able eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny, the mis­con­duct through­out his case, and the absence of any phys­i­cal evi­dence link­ing him to the crime. Hooper’s advanced age (76) and his lack of dis­ci­pli­nary issues while in prison were also discussed.

Hooper’s exe­cu­tion also brought atten­tion to Arizona’s con­tin­u­ing exclu­sion of jour­nal­ists from the Arizona Republic news­pa­per from wit­ness­ing exe­cu­tions. Arizona Republic reporters reg­u­lar­ly attend­ed exe­cu­tions until Arizona refused to put the out­let on its media list for the any of the three exe­cu­tions con­duct­ed in 2022. According to the Republic, when the governor’s office was asked about the exclu­sion from Clarence Dixon’s exe­cu­tion, a staff mem­ber attrib­uted it to the Republic print­ing ​“false infor­ma­tion.” The Republic had pub­lished arti­cles that were crit­i­cal of the state’s exe­cu­tion prac­tices and ille­gal pro­cure­ment of execution drugs.