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Clarence Dixon: Has been on death row since his conviction in 2008
Photo: HANDOUT/AFP
The US state of Arizona has carried out a death sentence for the first time since 2014.
Clarence Dixon, 66, died Wednesday from lethal injection, authorities said.
Among other things, he was convicted of the rape and murder of a 21-year-old student in 1978.
His lawyers had been trying to prevent the execution for the past few weeks.
Your client is mentally incapable of being executed.
He has no rational understanding of why he faces the death penalty.
According to official sources, Dixon himself criticized the court's decisions shortly before his execution and protested his innocence.
In 1978, Dixon had stabbed, raped, and strangled 21-year-old Deana Bowdoin.
The case remained unsolved for a long time.
However, he received a life sentence in 1986 for another sexual assault.
DNA samples linked him to Bowdoin's murder in 2001.
He has been on death row since his conviction in the case in 2008.
In Arizona, no death sentences had been carried out for eight years.
The trigger was the execution of a convict in 2014. The double murderer only died after two hours of violent convulsions and 15 doses of poison.
In addition to lethal injection, the state also allows executions by gas chamber.
Dixon would have had a choice between these two methods.
He refused to choose a method and was therefore given the lethal injection.
Dixon's execution was the sixth in the United States that year.
bbr/AFP/AP