US state of Arizona executes first death row inmate since 2014

A Native American man sentenced to death in 2008 for the murder of a student 30 years earlier was executed on Wednesday May 11 in the US state of Arizona (southwest), which had not carried out an execution since 2014 .

To discover

• LIVE - War in Ukraine: follow minute by minute the evolution of the conflict

Read alsoDeath penalty: executioner in France, story of a taboo job

Clarence Dixon, a 66-year-old member of the Navajo Nation, was pronounced dead at 10:30 a.m. local time (5:30 p.m. GMT) after receiving a lethal injection at Florence State Prison, the prison services said in a statement. Arizona.

In January 1978, he stabbed, strangled and raped a 21-year-old student, Deana Bowdoin, in Tempe, days after being found not guilty of an assault due to her psychological state.

“I may see you on the other side”

Sentenced to life in prison for a sexual assault in 1986, he was mistaken thanks to DNA analyzes for the death of the student.

"

,” he said before the sentence was applied, according to a witness quoted by the local press.

His lawyers had filed multiple appeals, arguing that their client, blind and suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, did not understand why he had been sentenced to death.

Clarence Dixon "

", his lawyer Eric Zuckerman said on Tuesday during a hearing before a San Francisco appeals court which rejected his appeal.

The United States Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a final stay request filed hours before the execution.

Arizona resumed executions by lethal injection after an 8-year hiatus, when an inmate had been in agony for two hours, seized with convulsions after the injection of 15 doses of lethal products.

Doubts about the legality of this protocol - suspected of causing illegal suffering to convicts - and the refusal of pharmaceutical companies to supply these products have led to a marked decline in the death penalty in the country.

Read alsoUnited States: an execution scheduled for Tuesday in Missouri after a judicial marathon

Les autorités de cet État conservateur - où 112 condamnés attendent dans le couloir de la mort - ont également autorisé les exécutions par gaz mortel dans une chambre à gaz. Elles ont prévu d'utiliser du cyanure d'hydrogène, l'élément principal du Zyklon-B, gaz associé à l'Holocauste. Le 3 mai, la Cour suprême de l'Arizona a donné quinze jours à un autre condamné à mort pour choisir entre l'injection létale ou l'inhalation de gaz mortels. Frank Atwood, condamné en 1987 pour le meurtre d'une fillette de huit ans, doit être exécuté le 8 juin. Clarence Dixon avait lui aussi eu deux semaines pour demander la chambre à gaz, afin d'éviter l'injection létale. Son silence a valu acceptation de la seconde option.