Entries tagged with “Clarence Dixon”
Jan 21, 2026
New Autopsy Report Renews Concerns about Arizona’s Execution Protocol
An autopsy of Richard Djerf, who was executed in Arizona in October 2025, has renewed concerns about the state’s lethal injection execution protocol and the state’s efforts to address longstanding execution-related concerns. Mr. Djerf was convicted for the September 1993 murders of four members of the Luna family in Phoenix. The autopsy, conducted by Pinal County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. John Hu, established for the first time that medical personnel encountered significant difficulty…
Upcoming Executions
,Botched Executions
,Nov 22, 2024
New Resource: In Era of Secrecy, States Increasingly Restrict Media Access to Executions
On December 18, Joseph Corcoran is scheduled to be the first person executed by Indiana officials in 15 years. For the first time, the state will use a single drug, pentobarbital, which comes from an unknown source and has been known to cause prisoners “excruciating” pain during executions. But no media witnesses will be present to relay what happens to the public. Indiana is an outlier in its policy decision to completely exclude the press from witnessing executions in the state. But a survey…
Executions
Executions Overview
,Botched Executions
,Jan 17, 2023
Tennessee Gov. Says No Death Warrants Until Execution Protocol Problems Fixed
Tennessee will not resume executions until it fixes systemic problems with the administration of its execution protocol, Governor Bill Lee has announced. “It’s a very important issue that has to be done correctly,” Lee told reporters on January 5, 2023. “And we will take the time to fix the protocol and to make certain that we don’t move forward until everything’s in place.” Lee, a Republican, halted the execution of Oscar Smith on April 21, 2022 after learning that the Tennessee Department of…
Research
Botched Executions
,Dec 07, 2022
As Lethal Injection Turns Forty, States Botch a Record Number of Executions
On December 7, 1982, Texas strapped Charles Brooks to a gurney, inserted an intravenous line into his arm, and injected a lethal dose of sodium thiopental into his veins, launching the lethal-injection era of American executions. In the precisely forty years since, U.S. states and the federal government have put 1377 prisoners to death by some version of the method. Touted as swift and painless and a more humane way to die — just as execution proponents had said nearly a century before about…
Issues
Jun 02, 2022
Arizona Violated Court Order to Allow Media to Witness Execution, Lawyer for Newspapers Says
Arizona violated state law, state corrections policies, and a court order by denying a reporter from the state’s largest daily circulation newspaper access to view the May 11 execution of Clarence Dixon and by blocking witnesses’ views of a portion of the execution process, a lawyer for the newspaper has charged. In a May 20, 2022 letter to Arizona Department of Corrections (ADOC) Director David Shinn and Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, David Bodney, attorney for Phoenix Newspapers, Inc. (PNI)…
Executions
Botched Executions
,May 19, 2022
Expert Calls Arizona’s First Execution in Eight Years ‘Botched’ After Witnesses Report Problems Inserting IV
In an execution an expert has characterized as “botched,“ Arizona Department of Corrections personnel failed for 25 minutes to set an intravenous line in Clarence Dixon’s arms on May 11, 2022 before performing a bloody and apparently unauthorized “cutdown“ procedure to insert the IV line into a vein in his groin. It was the first execution the state had carried out after a nearly eight-year hiatus following the botched two-hour execution of Joseph Wood on July 23, 2014. Fox News media witness…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,Native Americans
,May 06, 2022
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…
Executions
Upcoming Executions
,Native Americans
,Apr 08, 2022
Arizona Sets Expedited Execution Date for Blind, Disabled Prisoner Previously Judged Legally Insane
The Arizona Supreme Court has set an execution date of May 11 for Clarence Dixon, a death-row prisoner who is blind and has such severe mental illness that he was once judged legally insane. Dixon is a member of the Navajo Nation, which has long opposed the death penalty as inconsistent with its culture and values. “The state has had nearly a year to demonstrate that it will not be carrying out executions with expired drugs but has failed to do so,” Jennifer Moreno, one of Dixon’s attorneys…
Executions
Upcoming Executions
,Jul 12, 2021
Arizona Supreme Court Rejects Prosecution Attempt to Expedite Executions Based on Its Own Error on Shelf Life of Execution Drugs
The Arizona Supreme Court has rejected the efforts of Arizona prosecutors to expedite the executions of two death-row prisoners and further limit appeals judicial review of legal issues in their cases. The Arizona Attorney General’s office had sought to shorten judicial review in the cases of death-row prisoners Frank Atwood and Clarence Dixon after learning that the shelf life of the drugs it intended to use in the executions would expire before the executions could be carried out. Arizona…
Executions
Upcoming Executions
,Jul 12, 2021
Arizona Seeks to Expedite Executions, With Less Judicial Oversight, Because of Its Own Error on Shelf Life of Execution Drugs
The Arizona Attorney General’s office has asked the Arizona Supreme Court to curtail the time allotted to judicial review of legal issues in the cases of two death-row prisoners prosecutors want to execute, saying that the drugs they intend to use in the executions remain potent half as long as it had previously represented. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (pictured) told the court in April 2021 that it should set expedited filing deadlines in advance of issuing execution warrants for…
Executions
Methods of Execution
,Jun 02, 2021
Arizona Prepares for Executions With Gas Used in Holocaust Death Camps
Arizona reportedly has “refurbished” its gas chamber and has spent more than $2,000 to acquire ingredients to execute prisoners with cyanide gas, the same gas used by the Nazis to murder more than one million men, women, and children during the Holocaust. Records obtained by The Guardian show that the Arizona Department of Corrections Rehabilitation and Reentry purchased a solid brick of potassium cyanide in December for $1,530. The state also purchased supplies of additional ingredients for…
Issues
Apr 12, 2021
Arizona AG Asks Court to Set Execution Dates, Sparking Broad Backlash
Nearly seven years after the botched execution of Joseph Wood put the death penalty on hold in Arizona, state officials are seeking to resume executions. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced on April 6, 2021 that he is asking the Arizona Supreme Court to set a briefing schedule and issue execution warrants for death-row prisoners Clarence Dixon and Frank Atwood. At present, no state but Texas has any pending executions scheduled for 2021. The Attorney General’s announcement drew…