Clarence Dixon, a 66-year-old Native American man, was executed on 11 May 2022. This was Arizona’s first execution in nearly eight years. Clarence Dixon was sentenced to death in 2008 for a murder committed in 1978. He had a long history of mental disability, including multiple diagnoses of paranoid schizophrenia. A state court rejected the claim that he was mentally incompetent for execution and the federal courts upheld this ruling emphasizing the deferential standard for federal review of state court decisions. Executive clemency was not forthcoming.
