After a process that took more than a year, Arizona’s Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) is one step closer to resuming the use of the death penalty in the state.
Friday reports said Brnovich requested execution warrants for convicted killer Clarence Dixon and Frank Atwood, but it’s a process that has been long in the making.
Last year, Brnovich explained that process in a January 2021 press release.
“The [Attorney General’s Office] is asking the Arizona Supreme Court to establish firm briefing schedules before filing the execution warrants to ensure the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (ADCRR) can comply with its testing and disclosure obligations,” he said at the time. “This will guarantee strict compliance with the current lethal-injection protocol and a related settlement.”
The Supreme Court agreed to the briefing terms, and now that they have been met, Brnovich is filing his warrants. Per those warrants, the inmates will be allowed to select death by lethal injection or cyanide gas.
“Justice has been a long time coming in some of the most heinous crimes committed in our state,” Brnovich said. “It is our solemn duty to fulfill these court-ordered sentences on behalf of the victims, their loved ones, and our communities.”
Arizona has not executed an inmate since 2014.
Dixon and Atwood were convicted of heinous crimes.
The former strangled, raped and killed an Arizona State University student in 1978. The latter murdered an 8-year-old girl in 1984.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona (ACLUAZ) did not immediately return a comment request from the Arizona Sun Times, but it has already taken some action in the case.
The group is representing the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix, which objects to the potential use of cyanide gas as a means of death.
“Approximately 80 Holocaust survivors currently call our state their home and many of these survivors are horrified at being taxed to implement the same machinery of cruelty that was used to murder their loved ones,” Tim Eckstein, chairman of the board of that group reportedly said.
“It is appalling that Arizona has chosen to use the very same chemical compound that was used by the Nazis in Auschwitz to murder more than one million people.”
“Regardless of where people stand on the matter of capital punishment, it’s clear that use of this barbaric practice is cruel and must be abolished,” ACLUAZ senior staff attorney Jared Keenan said.
Currently, there are more than 100 death row inmates in Arizona, and according to Brnovich’s office, 20 of them have exhausted all of their potential appeals.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at the Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Mark Brnovich” by Attorney General Mark Brnovich.
