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

An Arizona tri­al court has ruled that Clarence Dixon, a death-row pris­on­er with audi­to­ry and visu­al hal­lu­ci­na­tions and delu­sion­al thought process­es from para­noid schiz­o­phre­nia, is com­pe­tent to be executed. 

In an opin­ion dat­ed May 3, 2022 — the same day the court con­duct­ed an evi­den­tiary hear­ing on the issue — Pinal County Judge Robert Carter Olson found that Dixon ​“has a men­tal dis­or­der or men­tal ill­ness of schiz­o­phre­nia” but that his men­tal state was not ​“so dis­tort­ed by this men­tal ill­ness that he lacks a ratio­nal under­stand­ing of the State’s ratio­nale for his exe­cu­tion.” Dixon, whose exe­cu­tion is sched­uled for May 11, 2022, is now also blind. 

Dixon was sen­tenced to death in 2008 for the 1978 mur­der of Arizona State University stu­dent Deana Bowdoin, which occurred while civ­il com­mit­ment pro­ceed­ings for his men­tal ill­ness were pend­ing. In 1977, Dixon was charged with assault after hit­ting a stranger on the head with a met­al pipe. He was adju­di­cat­ed incom­pe­tent to stand tri­al and was com­mit­ted for treat­ment in a state hos­pi­tal. At his January 1978 tri­al, then-Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sandra Day O’Connor, lat­er a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, found Dixon not guilty by rea­son of insan­i­ty. Judge O’Connor direct­ed Maricopa County pros­e­cu­tors to make arrange­ments for Dixon’s con­tin­ued cus­tody until civ­il com­mit­ment pro­ceed­ings, which were sched­uled to start with­in ten days, could begin. Instead, Dixon was released. Two days lat­er, he killed Bowdoin.

Dixon was not con­nect­ed to the mur­der for two decades, and at his 2008 cap­i­tal tri­al, he was per­mit­ted to fire his court-appoint­ed attor­neys and rep­re­sent him­self. At tri­al, Dixon pre­sent­ed a con­vo­lut­ed defense based upon his delu­sion­al belief that the charges against him 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 in the United States Supreme Court that the Court declined to review ear­li­er this year.

In his May 3 rul­ing on Dixon’s incom­pe­ten­cy to be exe­cut­ed claim, Judge Olson described Dixon’s tri­al defense as ​“an ele­gant the­o­ry” and said that Dixon exhib­it­ed ​“sophis­ti­ca­tion” as well as ​“coher­ent and orga­nized think­ing.” Applying Arizona’s statu­to­ry legal stan­dard for deter­min­ing com­pe­ten­cy — a stan­dard that Dixon’s lawyers have claimed is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al — Olson found that Dixon had not proven ​“by clear and con­vinc­ing evi­dence … 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.” In reach­ing his deci­sion, Olson cred­it­ed the pros­e­cu­tion’s expert tes­ti­mo­ny about Dixon’s under­stand­ing of the ratio­nale for his exe­cu­tion and not­ed Dixon’s above-aver­age intel­li­gence and ​“flu­ent lan­guage skills,” and the lack of evi­dence that Dixon suf­fered from demen­tia. Though find­ing it ​“a much clos­er ques­tion,“ Olson said that Dixon also had not proven his incom­pe­ten­cy by the stan­dard pro­posed by his coun­sel, ​“a pre­pon­der­ance of the evidence.“

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 lawyers pre­sent­ed evi­dence that Dixon has schiz­o­phre­nia, with accom­pa­ny­ing audi­to­ry and visu­al hal­lu­ci­na­tions and delu­sion­al think­ing. Dixon’s attor­neys pro­vid­ed tes­ti­mo­ny from Dr. Lauro Amezcua-Patino, a psy­chi­a­trist with more than 30 years of expe­ri­ence in diag­nos­ing and treat­ing psy­chot­ic dis­or­ders. Dr. Amezcua-Patino vis­it­ed and inter­viewed Dixon mul­ti­ple times since 2011 and spent near­ly 40 hours review­ing doc­u­ments. He 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 Dr. Carlos Vega, who had nev­er eval­u­at­ed an individual’s com­pe­ten­cy to be exe­cut­ed before and who spoke to Dixon via video con­fer­ence for 70 min­utes. Dr. Vega, a for­mer clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist, admit­ted dur­ing cross exam­i­na­tion that he had nev­er diag­nosed or treat­ed any­one with schiz­o­phre­nia and did ​“very lit­tle” research into how to per­form a com­pe­ten­cy eval­u­a­tion of this mag­ni­tude. 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 the cur­rent com­po­si­tion of the five-mem­ber board vio­lat­ed Arizona’s statu­to­ry require­ment that no more than two mem­bers of any pro­fes­sion­al dis­ci­pline may serve at the same time. Three of the board mem­bers served more than 20 years each as law enforce­ment offi­cers and the fourth is a for­mer state pros­e­cu­tor. A fifth seat on the board is currently vacant.

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.”