An Arizona prisoner convicted in the 1978 killing of a university student is set to be executed Tuesday, the first execution in the state in nearly eight years.
Dixon is scheduled to be executed for the 1978 rape and murder of Arizona State University student Deana Bowdoin.Lawyers for Dixon said they will appeal the ruling to the Arizona Supreme Court.
Dixon was sentenced to life sentences in that case for sexual assault and other convictions. DNA samples taken while he was in prison later linked him to Bowdoin's killing, which at that point had been unsolved. Late Tuesday night, Dixon's lawyers asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review lower-court decisions that denied his request to postpone the execution.
Authorities have said Bowdoin, who was found dead in her apartment, had been raped, stabbed and strangled. Dixon had been charged with raping Bowdoin, but the charge was later dropped on statute-of-limitation grounds. He was convicted, though, in her death. About a year ago, prosecutors took steps to seek the executions of Dixon and another death-row prisoner, but the litigation was put on hold by the state Supreme Court because of concerns over the expiration date of the drug to be used in the lethal injections.
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