Prisoner put to death in Arizona’s first execution since 2014

Clarence Dixon (Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry via AP, File)

An Arizona man convicted of killing a college student in 1978 has been put to death after a nearly eight-year pause in the state’s use of the death penalty brought on by an execution that critics say was botched — and the difficulty officials faced in finding lethal injection drugs.

Clarence Dixon, 66, died by lethal injection at the state prison in Florence for his murder conviction for the killing of 21-year-old Arizona State University student Deana Bowdoin, making him the sixth person to be executed in the US in 2022.