On March 31st, 2022, Arizona announced execution date has been set for Clarence Dixon in revenge for his 1977 killing of Deana Bowdoin, a 21-year-old Arizona State University student. If it takes place as scheduled, this would be the state’s first execution in eight years. Dixon has been on death row more than 40 years.  

[Scroll down for the operative petition language.]

BACKGROUND

Read this from Dixon's defense counsel. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Arizona put executions on hold after the 2014 death of Joseph Wood, who was given 15 doses of a two-drug combination over two hours. His attorney said the execution was botched. In fact, Arizona has badly botched four executions in as many years.  

To resume executions, while the majority of states have abandoned the death penalty in either law or practice, is in direct opposition to the evolving standards of decency in our country. Also, it turns out the state spent over $1 million to procure drugs for executions, even as so many of its citizens are still suffering the economic impacts of the pandemic.

Furthermore, it is important to note that Black people account for just 5.2 percent of the state’s population, but 16 percent of the state’s 116-person death row. Arizona has sentenced nearly a quarter of all Native Americans facing the death penalty in the United States.

Please sign this petition to let officials in Arizona know that resuming executions is the wrong thing to do, and asking Governor Ducey to grant clemency by commuting the death sentence of Clarence Dixon to life in prison.