Advocacy groups hold vigils for death-row inmate Dixon
Two groups held vigils Tuesday night prior to Arizona’s first scheduled execution since 2014.
Clarence Dixon was denied his request for commutation or reprieve last week by the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency. His lawyers filed a flurry of last-minute appeals and challenges, the latest ending in the state making a new batch of drugs to be used for the execution.
Dixon was convicted and sentenced to death in 2008 for the 1978 murder of Arizona State University student Deana Bowdoin. He’s scheduled to be executed today and would be the first person to be executed in Arizona since the botched execution of Joseph Wood in 2014.
Dixon’s attorneys argued that Dixon has suffered from schizophrenia from an early age, experienced auditory and visual hallucinations and displayed delusional thoughts, but Board of Clemency members found Dixon to be mentally competent.
Death Penalty Alternatives for Arizona, a nonprofit that aims to abolish the death penalty in Arizona, organized one of the vigils alongside Arizona Faith Network, ACLU of Arizona and Mass Liberation Arizona. It was held at the Arizona Capitol in Phoenix.
Bruce Franks Jr., an organizer with Mass Liberation Arizona, called the death penalty a brutal and racist practice that allows the government to determine whether one’s life is disposable.
“Capital punishment is nothing more than a violent, racist tool of white supremacy,” Franks said. “Death is not justice.”
Franks accused Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich of using Dixon’s execution as a political ploy for his U.S. Senate campaign.
“Brnovich, who claims to be pro-life, is resuming executions so he can gain support from his right-wing base in the time of the midterm election,” Franks said. “Brnovich seeks to exchange Clarence Dixon’s precious life and the life of countless others on death row for votes.”
Kat Jutras, Death Penalty Alternatives for Arizona’s state advocacy director, equated the death penalty to “statesanctioned murder.”
“What’s happening to Clarence Dixon could happen to anyone who suffers from a debilitating mental illness and who was neglected by our justice system and not provided with resources, tools and treatment to be successful,” Jutras said in a written statement. “The death penalty makes communities less safe and siphons resources from programs that reduce and prevent crime.”
Also on Tuesday, Bishop Thomas Olmsted of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix led a prayer vigil at Sts. Simon and Jude Cathedral, 6351 N. 27th Ave. in Phoenix.
Olmsted was joined by Bishop Eduardo Nevares, the Sisters of Life and others to “pray together for victims, for aggressors, and for the state to abolish use of the death penalty.”