Professor Deborah Denno shared her insight on capital punishment methods in a 12 News article discussing Arizona’s upcoming execution, which brings to question the ethics of lethal injections.
Next week, the man who brutally murdered the 21-year-old Arizona State University honors student in 1978 is scheduled to be executed at the state prison in Florence.
It’s the first execution in Arizona in eight years, and it casts a spotlight on what one critic has called the state’s “relentless search” for ways to put condemned inmates to death.
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A botched execution in 2014 proved to be a turning point that tested the state’s commitment to enforcing the death penalty.
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Deborah Denno warns the Dixon execution could unfold much like Joseph Wood’s eight years ago.
“The first lethal injection execution occurred in 1982, and that injection was botched,” she said. “That’s always been a problematic method of execution. But it’s only gotten worse over the past decade, because of this scramble and experimentation with drugs.”
“There’s every reason to expect that the execution of Clarence Dixon, for example, is going to be very similar to the botched execution of Joseph Wood.”