Attorney General Mark Brnovich issued a death warrant for Dixon last week, setting his execution date as May 11. It would be the first time Arizona has carried out the death penalty in eight years — after a badly botched execution drew heightened scrutiny and legal challenges to the program.
But Dixon’s attorneys have launched a new challenge to the state’s plans, in a special action suit filed Monday in Maricopa County Superior Court. They argue the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency — a body that has the power to recommend Dixon not be executed — is made up of too many cops and violates the law and Dixon’s legal rights.
Dixon was sentenced to death in 2008 for the murder of Arizona State University student Deana Bowdoin. He is one of 112 people on death row in Arizona.
Bowdoin was sexually assaulted and killed in 1978. She was found strangled and stabbed to death, alone in her Tempe apartment. For decades, no one had answered for her death.
In the years after Bowdoin died, Dixon had been convicted of raping another woman at knifepoint. He was already in prison for life when a jury handed down a death sentence in the Bowdoin case. DNA evidence connected Dixon, Bowdoin’s neighbor at the time, to the crime.
Bowdoin’s family has voiced support for the death penalty in…
