Execution ends Arizona 8-year hiatus with the death penalty

By PAUL DAVENPORT and JACQUES BILLEAUD
Associated Press

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona’s nearly eight-year hiatus in using the death penalty has ended with the execution of Clarence Dixon for the killing of a college student 44 years ago. The lethal injection of Dixon on Wednesday in the 1978 killing of Arizona State University student Deana Bowdoin broke the lull in Arizona’s use of capital punishment caused by a 2014 execution that critics say was botched and the difficulty that state officials faced in sourcing lethal injection drugs. Dixon is the sixth person to be executed in the United States so far this year. He had been on death row since 2008. Arizona now has 112 prisoners on its death row.