Arizona

History of the Death Penalty

Capital pun­ish­ment has been a fea­ture of the Arizona crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem since 1865, when Dolores Moore became the first record­ed exe­cu­tion in the fed­er­al ter­ri­to­ry that is now the state of Arizona. 108 exe­cu­tions were car­ried out in Arizona before the nation­al mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions was imposed by the US Supreme Court in 1972. Executions were gen­er­al­ly car­ried out by method of hang­ing until 1934, when the first exe­cu­tion by gas cham­ber was car­ried out in Arizona. Lethal injec­tion became Arizona’s pri­ma­ry method of exe­cu­tion on November 15^th of 1992, how­ev­er those sen­tenced to death before that date may still elect lethal gas as their method of execution.

Timeline

1865 – First known exe­cu­tion in Arizona, Dolores Moore hung for murder.

1930 – Eva Dugan is exe­cut­ed and the rope snaps her head off.

1934 – Arizona aban­dons hang­ing in favor of the gas cham­ber for executions.

1972 – The Supreme Court strikes down the death penal­ty in Furman v. Georgia.

1973 – Arizona pass­es a law rein­stat­ing capital punishment.

1976 – The Supreme Court rein­states the death penal­ty when it upholds Georgia’s statute in Gregg v. Georgia.

1978 – The Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Lockett v. Ohio inval­i­dates Arizona’s statute. All death row pris­on­ers were sub­se­quent­ly remand­ed for resentencing.

1979 – The Arizona Legislature revis­es the state’s cap­i­tal punishment statute.

1992 – Arizona vot­ers replace the gas cham­ber with lethal injec­tion, although peo­ple sen­tenced pri­or to this date could still choose the gas cham­ber to be executed.

1999 – Arizona gasses Walter LaGrand, a German cit­i­zen, to death.

2000 – Arizona Attorney General Janet Napolitano cre­ates the Capital Case Commission to study the death penal­ty in Arizona.

2001 – The International Court of Justice finds that the U.S. vio­lat­ed the Vienna Convention when it exe­cut­ed LaGrand with­out inform­ing him of his right to be assist­ed in his case by the German consulate.

2002 – The U.S. Supreme Court finds the Arizona death penal­ty sen­tenc­ing scheme uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in Ring v. Arizona.

2011 – Amid a nation­al lethal injec­tion drug short­age, the Department of Justice informs Arizona that its sup­ply of sodi­um thiopen­tal was import­ed ille­gal­ly. Arizona rapid­ly switch­es to pen­to­bar­bi­tal and continues executions.

2014 – Arizona exe­cutes Joseph Wood using a two-drug cock­tail of mida­zo­lam and hydro­mor­phone. It takes Wood two hours to die. A fed­er­al judge sub­se­quent­ly issues a stay on exe­cu­tions in Arizona.

2015 – Debra Milke, on death row for mur­der­ing her son, is exonerated.

2015 – Arizona tries to import ille­gal lethal injec­tion drugs from India, but the drugs are con­fis­cat­ed at the Phoenix air­port by FDA officials.

2016 — Arizona offi­cials declare that the state does not have the drugs nec­es­sary to car­ry out an exe­cu­tion and is unable to obtain them.

2017 — A fed­er­al dis­trict court judge in Arizona denies the dis­clo­sure of exe­cu­tion drug sup­pli­ers to the state after Arizona’s secre­cy sur­round­ing the death penal­ty was chal­lenged by mul­ti­ple news orga­ni­za­tions as vio­lat­ing the First Amendment.

2019 — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rules that the pub­lic has a First Amendment right to wit­ness and hear the entire process of exe­cu­tion in First Amendment Coalition of Arizona v. Ryan. The court fur­ther pro­hib­it­ed Arizona from turn­ing off the exe­cu­tion cham­ber’s micro­phone dur­ing an execution.

2021 — Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry refur­bish­es the state’s gas cham­ber and spends more than $2000 procur­ing cyanide gas ingre­di­ents in prepa­ra­tion to kill death row inmates using hydro­gen cyanide. The lethal gas would be the same as that deployed at by the Nazi regime dur­ing the Holocaust.

2022 — Arizona puts Clarence Dixon to death in its first exe­cu­tion attempt since 2014. ADCRR per­son­nel failed to set an intra­venous line in Dixon’s arms for 25 min­utes before per­form­ing an unau­tho­rized ​“cut­down” pro­ce­dure to use a vein in his groin to insert the IV.

2023 — Barry Jones is freed from Arizona’s death row after being incar­cer­at­ed for 29 years.

Famous Cases

Tison v. Arizona: Perhaps the most infa­mous death penal­ty cas­es in the his­to­ry of Arizona had their incep­tion in a 1978 prison break. Gary Tison and his cell­mate Randy Greenawalt, both serv­ing life sen­tences for pre­vi­ous mur­ders, escaped from Arizona State Prison with the help of Tison’s three sons and lack­adaisi­cal prison vis­i­ta­tion rules. After dis­abling the pris­on’s phone and alarm sys­tem the gang fled toward the California bor­der. After the get­away vehi­cle used by the group blew a tire, Gary Tison killed the fam­i­ly that stopped to offer assis­tance, tak­ing their vehi­cle and flee­ing towards Colorado. The group killed anoth­er cou­ple for their vehi­cle in Colorado, flee­ing back into Arizona. After run­ning one road­block set up by police, they ran into a sec­ond road­block that was bet­ter pre­pared. A shootout result­ed, killing one of Tison’s sons. The rest tried to escape on foot, and although Greenawalt and two of Tison’s sons were caught quick­ly, Gary Tison escaped into the desert. His body was dis­cov­ered 11 days lat­er. The remain­ing Tisons and Greenawalt were charged with 92 crimes, includ­ing sev­er­al counts of cap­i­tal mur­der, even though they had not been the ones to pull the trig­ger. In 1986 this issue came before the Supreme Court of the United States, with the Tison broth­ers argu­ing that Arizona’s felony mur­der statute was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because it allowed for the death penal­ty for those oth­er than the actu­al killer. In a 5 – 4 deci­sion, the Supreme Court reject­ed their appeal, stat­ing that major par­tic­i­pants in a felony who exhib­it extreme indif­fer­ence to human life are eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty. Although Greenawalt was exe­cut­ed in 1997, the Tison broth­ers had their sentences reduced.

Ring v. Arizona: In this 2002 rul­ing, the Supreme Court of the United States held that jurors, rather than a judge, must be allowed to deter­mine whether a defen­dant is eli­gi­ble for a death sen­tence. The find­ing of the Court rest­ed on its pre­vi­ous rul­ing in Apprendi v. New Jersey: if a par­tic­u­lar ele­ment of the crime or sen­tenc­ing fac­tor exposed a defen­dant to harsh­er pun­ish­ment, a jury must find that fac­tor. The Supreme Court found no log­i­cal or com­pelling rea­son to exempt cap­i­tal cas­es from this require­ment. After the Supreme Court’s rul­ing, the Arizona leg­is­la­ture met in an emer­gency ses­sion to mend the death penal­ty statute to meet the guide­lines laid down by the Supreme Court, pro­vid­ing that jurors, not judges, would be respon­si­ble for impos­ing a death sentence.

Notable Exonerations 

On April 8, 2002, Ray Krone was released from Arizona prison after DNA evi­dence exon­er­at­ed him. He had been con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1992, based on cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence and tes­ti­mo­ny stat­ing that bite marks on the vic­tim’s body matched Krone’s teeth. His con­vic­tion was over­turned, but he was retried and sen­tenced to life in prison. DNA evi­dence was not pre­sent­ed in Krone’s orig­i­nal tri­al, and tests for his sec­ond tri­al were incon­clu­sive. In 2001, his defense attor­ney secured a court order to retest the DNA using the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy. Those tests found that the DNA did not belong to Krone, but instead came from anoth­er man, Kenneth Phillips, who was also in prison in Arizona.

On March 14, 2003, the Pima County Attorney’s Office dis­missed all charges against death row inmate Lemuel Prion, who had been con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing Diana Vicari in 1999. In August 2002, the Arizona Supreme Court had unan­i­mous­ly over­turned his con­vic­tion, stat­ing that the tri­al court com­mit­ted reversible error by exclud­ing evi­dence of anoth­er sus­pect. According to the Supreme Court, ​“There was no phys­i­cal evi­dence iden­ti­fy­ing Prion as her killer,” and the tri­al court abused its dis­cre­tion in not allow­ing the defense to sub­mit evi­dence that a third par­ty, John Mazure, was the actu­al killer. Mazure, who was also a sus­pect in the mur­der, was known to have a vio­lent tem­per, saw Vicari the night of her dis­ap­pear­ance, con­cealed infor­ma­tion from the police when they ques­tioned him, and ​“appeared at work the next morn­ing after Vicari’s dis­ap­pear­ance so disheveled and dis­ori­ent­ed that he was fired.” The Arizona Supreme Court held that the third-par­ty evi­dence ​“sup­ports the notion that Mazure had the oppor­tu­ni­ty and motive to com­mit this crime.” (Arizona v. Prion, No. CR-99 – 0378-AP (2002)) Prion’s con­vic­tion was based large­ly on the tes­ti­mo­ny of Troy Olson, who iden­ti­fied Prion as the man who was with Vicari on the night of her mur­der. However, when police first showed Olson pho­tographs of Prion, Olson could not iden­ti­fy Prion. Seventeen months lat­er, after see­ing a news­pa­per pic­ture of Prion label­ing him as the prime sus­pect in the Vicari mur­der, Olson believed he could iden­ti­fy Prion. Prosecutors admit­ted that Prion would most like­ly have been acquit­ted if pros­e­cut­ed under the stan­dards set by the August 2002 rul­ing. Prion remained incar­cer­at­ed in Utah for an unrelated crime.

Read DPIC’s descrip­tions of Arizona’s sev­en other exonerations:

Jonathan Treadaway

Jimmy Lee Mathers

James Robison

Robert Charles Cruz

David Wayne Grannis

Christopher McCrimmon

Debra Milke

Resources

• American Bar Association Arizona Death Penalty Assessment Report
• Department of Corrections
• Prosecutors
• Arizona Capital Representation Project
• Arizona Public Defenders Association
• Death Penalty Alternatives for Arizona
• Victims’ ser­vices

Arizona Execution Totals Since 1976