Arizona remains on track, at least for now, to use the death penalty for the first time in nearly eight years in an execution in which a condemned prisoner is being given the option of being put to death by the gas chamber — a method that hasn't been used in the U.S. in decades.
Clarence Dixon's warrant for execution sets a Thursday deadline for deciding whether he will be put to death with an injection of pentobarbital or with hydrogen cyanide gas for his murder conviction in the 1977 killing of Arizona State University student Deana Bowdoin. Lethal injection is the default method if Dixon doesn't make a choice.
