Arizona death-row prisoner won’t be executed in gas chamber

By JACQUES BILLEAUD
Associated Press

PHOENIX (AP) — A prisoner scheduled to be executed in what would be Arizona’s first use of the death penalty in nearly eight years won’t be put to death in the gas chamber. Clarence Dixon declined to pick a method of execution when officials asked if he wanted to die by lethal injection or the gas chamber. That means he will be executed by lethal injection, the default execution method. Dixon is scheduled to be executed May 11 for the 1978 murder of college student Deana Bowdoin. The last lethal gas execution in the U.S. was carried out in Arizona in 1999. Arizona refurbished its gas chamber in 2020.