Clarence Wayne Dixon, a 66-year-old jail inmate in Arizona, is ready to be executed on Wednesday after the sate's Supreme Courtroom struck down an try to have his capital punishment sentence repealed resulting from psychological sickness.

Dixon was sentenced to loss of life in 2008 for the 1978 homicide of Arizona State College scholar Deana Bowdoin. On the time of his conviction, he had already been serving a life jail sentence for individually attacking a Northern Arizona College scholar in 1985, in line with the Related Press. DNA samples taken whereas he was in jail in the end linked him to Bowdoin's killing, which had beforehand been unsolved.

Prosecutors concerned in his conviction stated that Bowdoin had been raped, strangled and stabbed to loss of life in her house, Newsweek beforehand reported. Dixon had lived throughout the road from Bowdoin in Tempe, Arizona, on the time of her killing.

Now, Dixon is ready to be executed after the state's Supreme Courtroom struck down an attraction to overturn a decrease courtroom ruling that discovered he's mentally competent to place to loss of life. His case has reignited a nationwide debate surrounding the ethics of capital punishment because it pertains to psychological well being.

Clarence Dixon Death Penalty
Clarence Dixon, an inmate convicted of homicide in Arizona, is ready to be executed on Wednesday. Right here, an execution mattress is seen on April 25, 1997, at Texas Demise Row in Huntsville, Texas. Per-Anders Pettersson/Liaison/Getty Photos

Representatives for Dixon have argued that he has been identified with paranoid schizophrenia and has suffered from blindness and hallucinations, leaving him mentally unfit for such a punishment. A physician who beforehand evaluated Dixon had famous that with out the presence of psychological sickness, he probably wouldn't have dedicated violent acts, in line with Slate.

"In gentle of Clarence Dixon's extreme psychological sickness and debilitating bodily disabilities, together with blindness, it could be unconscionable for the state of Arizona to execute him," Dixon's legal professional Dale Baich beforehand stated in an announcement supplied to Newsweek.

Regardless of these disabilities, a federal decide dominated that Dixon has failed "to point out that his psychological state is so distorted by a psychological sickness that he lacks a rational understanding of the state's rationale for his execution." The decide, nevertheless, acknowledged that Dixon suffers from schizophrenia.

In a separate ruling, Dixon's attorneys tried to problem the state's intention of utilizing of a deadly batch of sedative sodium pentobarbital that was combined in February, stating that it had expired and due to this fact violated Arizona's execution guidelines, AP reported. The state, in flip, denied that the drug was expired however provided to combine a brand new batch to make sure it could not be defective.

Dixon's deliberate execution will mark Arizona's first use of the loss of life penalty in almost eight years. The final occasion was in July 2014 when the state botched the killing of Joseph Wooden, who reportedly gasped and struggled to breathe for almost two hours after being given 15 doses of a two-drug mixture.

Activists and distinguished Democrats have lengthy urged for the loss of life penalty to be abolished, calling the punishment merciless and inhumane. Earlier this yr, loss of life penalty opponents rallied exterior of the U.S. Supreme Courtroom in an effort to get President Joe Biden to finish all federal capital punishment.