The same year, he was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon when he attacked a 15-year-old girl, whom Dixon would later claim reminded him of his ex-wife.
Two psychiatrists who examined Dixon concluded that he was not competent to stand trial and he was found not guilty by reason of insanity by future U.S. Supreme Court judge Sandra Day O'Connor.
[3] On January 6, 1978, 21-year-old Deana Lynne Bowdoin, an Arizona State University senior, met her parents for dinner and then went to meet a friend at a nearby bar.
At around 2:00 a.m. Bowdoin's boyfriend returned to the apartment and found her dead body lying on the bed.
He learned that the profile matched Clarence Dixon, a man who was serving a life sentence in an Arizona state prison for a 1986 sexual-assault conviction.
[7] Dixon's lawyers argued that he was mentally incompetent, had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and had experienced frequent hallucinations throughout his life.
[9] In 2020, the Arizona Department of Corrections purchased one thousand vials of the drug pentobarbital, costing one and a half million dollars.
[13] In January 2022, Brnovich asked the Arizona Supreme Court to set briefing schedules for the executions of Atwood and Dixon once again.
Brnovich announced that additional testing had been conducted on the lethal injection drugs, and they would have a beyond-use date of at least ninety days.
[6] On April 28, the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency denied Dixon's request for a commutation or a reprieve.