Death of a prisoner, not a system
State death penalty has a tainted record … We still say fire Michael Crow .. And they never/briefly worked here.
Arizona’s record on the death penalty is haunted by moments of incompetence, cruelty and political theater.
In recent history, we’ve seen botched lethal injections, prisoners found innocent after decades behind bars and a governor using the system to prove she can be tough.
Last week, Arizona added another execution to its record. Richard Djerf was sentenced to death in 1993 after murdering a family of four in Phoenix, whom he believed had stolen from him.
Between his sentencing and the carrying out of his execution, his future was unclear — mostly because Arizona has had a tumultuous on-again-off-again relationship with state-sponsored killings dating back 25 years.
Too much punishment
Over two decades ago, Arizona’s policies for the death penalty made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Ring v. Arizona, the court examined whether the state’s capital sentencing violated the Sixth Amendment after a judge, rather than a jury, imposed the death penalty.
The court ruled 7-2 that a jury must decide whether to impose the death penalty.
“The right to trial by jury guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment would be senselessly diminished if it encompassed the factfinding necessary to increase a defendant’s sentence by two years, but not the factfinding necessary to put him to death,” wrote Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The Ring v. Arizona case and other legal hangups meant Arizona only executed one person between 2000 and 2009.
Then, from 2010 to 2014, Arizona performed 14 executions.
Joseph Wood’s 2014 execution was the last one Arizona performed before launching an eight-year hiatus. The convicted murderer experienced an excruciating two-hour lethal injection that created international headlines and forced political leaders to reexamine how, and if, they wanted to continue putting people to death.
Troy Hayden from Fox10 was a witness to the botched execution.
“Joe Wood is dead, but it took him two hours to die,” Hayden said. “And to watch a man lay there for an hour and 40 minutes gulping air, I can liken it to, if you catch a fish and throw it on the shore, the way the fish opens and closes its mouth.”
Nearly eight years later, during the final months of former Gov. Doug Ducey’s term, executions resumed with Clarence Dixon, who also experienced a lethal injection that was characterized as “botched.” His capital punishment came after DNA profiling in 2001 linked him to a murder from 1978. Hayden also witnessed Dixon’s death and described trouble inserting the IV line, which later required the execution team to cut into Dixon’s groin to administer the drug cocktail.
Dixon maintained his innocence until the end.
“The Arizona Supreme Court should follow the laws. They denied my appeals and petitions to change the outcome of this trial,” Dixon said in his final statement. “I do and will always proclaim innocence. Let’s do this shit.”
Investigation for the show
After decades of nightmarish death row stories, Gov. Katie Hobbs announced in 2023 that the state would establish a “Death Penalty Independent Review Commissioner,” and she paused all executions until the commissioner could complete his review.
Except she didn’t even wait for the results of the review before resuming executions.
In November 2024, Hobbs fired former federal Judge David Duncan, whom she had hired to conduct the death penalty report. Duncan, who appeared on Fox10 after he was fired, said he was dismissed for telling the governor and her people “what they didn’t want to hear” — mainly, that there was no humane way for the state to conduct lethal injections, and the most humane way to kill people would be the firing squad.
Hobbs said he was dismissed because she no longer had faith he could carry out the executive order. But others, including Duncan, criticized Hobbs’ move as “playing politics” after the national mood shifted following President Donald Trump’s reelection.
Hobbs had her prison director, Ryan Thornell, conduct his own internal review, which found the department was ready to resume lethal injection executions. Duncan’s conclusion was the opposite.
“Early on, I thought lethal injection would work,” said Duncan. “The more I learned about it, I learned that that was a false hope.”
Despite Duncan’s conclusions, Hobbs and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes resumed executions this year.
Djerf’s execution on Friday made him the second Arizona prisoner this year to receive a lethal injection.
While the next victim of the system hasn’t been announced, Arizona has 107 prisoners on death row — and no clear path toward system reform.
The innocent ones
Over the last quarter-century, Arizona has released two death row inmates who were proven innocent.
Debra Milke spent over 22 years on death row for the murder of her son in 1989. She was initially found guilty after a Phoenix detective said she had confessed to him — a confession that was not recorded and that Milke denied she ever made.
In 2015, Milke was exonerated after a 9th Circuit ruling from two years prior found she did not receive a fair trial.
“I always believed this day would come I just didn’t think it would take 25 years, 3 months and 14 days to rectify such a blatant miscarriage of justice,” Milke said.
Milke now works for Witness Innocence — a group that works to eliminate the death penalty because of the innocent people on death row.
Barry Jones became Arizona’s most recent exoneree when he was released in 2023 after spending almost 30 years on death row. Jones was convicted of capital murder in 1995 after numerous failures by his trial attorney.
In 2022, as Jones continued seeking legal action, a similar case went on to the Supreme Court in Shinn v. Ramirez. The question of the case was whether a federal court could consider new evidence that was not presented at the lower courts. The court ruled new evidence could not be presented at the federal court — even if there were attorney shortcomings.
Despite the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling, the State of Arizona reconsidered the evidence in Jones’s case, and the Arizona Attorney General’s Office agreed that Jones’s sentence should be vacated, given the medical evidence that was not initially considered in court. The Pima County Superior Court came to an agreement with the death row inmate.
Jones pled guilty to second-degree murder after failing to take his girlfriend’s daughter to a hospital for her fatal internal injury — which did not occur in his care — in exchange for his release from prison for time served.
“It is an incredible feeling to be back in the arms of my family after 29 years,” Jones said upon his release in 2023. “I am so grateful to my defense team, who never gave up on exposing the truth in my case, and to my family, who stood by me throughout this terrible ordeal.”
Number 1 in innovative groveling: ASU has been secretly meeting with the White House for weeks about potentially joining President Donald Trump’s “compact” with universities, the Wall Street Journal reported. ASU is “is interested in an agreement with the administration on a set of shared principles … but has concerns about the legal nature of the compact,” per the Journal’s anonymous source privy to the negotiations. UofA, which was one of the first nine universities singled out for the offer they can’t refuse without jeopardizing their federal funding, still hasn’t said whether it plans to join. But six of the nine universities have officially said no. Meanwhile, Gov. Katie Hobbs finally weighed in on the drama, saying she doesn’t like the compact. However, she bailed on the Arizona Board of Regents meeting to discuss it, and said she won’t use her position on the board to argue one way or the other, per Capitol scribe Howie Fischer.
“I think that the president prides himself on being a deal maker,” Hobbs said. “But a lot of times, the deals he’s making are one-sided. And they benefit him or his agenda, but not the person on the other side.”
Kings are cool again: Tens of thousands of people turned out across the valley, state and nation for the “No Kings Protest” on Saturday. The Republic’s Rey Covarrubias Jr. even spotted Arizona’s most famous January 6 rioter, the QAnon Shaman, at the events, complaining about the Epstein files. The Phoenix New Times has pics of the best signs (which include a lot of dick references), and 12News’ Joe Dana found a semi-novel way to cover the events: survey 200+ attendees. The White House responded to the protests with the following meme.
Maybe this week: Attorney General Kris Mayes says she still plans to sue U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson over his refusal to swear in Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva, even though the Friday deadline she had given has come and gone, the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger and Laura Gersony write.
“It’s a publicity stunt by a Democrat Attorney General in Arizona who sees a national moment and wants to call me out,” Johnson told reporters Friday.
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The other nutty president: The slow-motion train crash that is the Navajo Nation government continued its pileup in recent weeks, as President Buu Nygren fired the nation’s controller, sparking a new legal fight, KJZZ’s Gabriel Pietrorazio reports. So far, at least two of the nation’s five regional agencies have delivered votes of no-confidence in Nygren and his estranged vice president, Richelle Montoya. Nygren is refusing to resign, but Montoya, who previously lobbed sexual harassment complaints against Nygren, said she’s willing to step down, or to become president if Nygren does.
Shades of Project Blue: The Pinal County Planning and Zoning Commission gave the OK to a proposed data center outside of Maricopa, despite opposition from residents and the vice chairman of the Ak-Chin Indian Community, which the data center would border, per In Maricopa’s Monica D. Spencer. Ak-Chin Vice Chairman Delia Carlyle said the area “is known to have high concentrations of cultural artifacts.” It’s one of three data centers the Planning and Zoning Commission approved last week.
In other, other news
Our friends at Lookout, Arizona’s best LGBTQ+ news source, are hosting one heck of a weekend-long party next month. It kicks off on Friday, November 7, with a town hall-style conversation and panel about LGBTQ+ civil rights. On Saturday, they’ve got a community kickball session followed by dinner and a movie at a park. Sunday is their “daytime soiree” to “sweat, dance, flaunt our campiest fits, and rack up all the Instagrammable moments.” The Agenda crew will be there, though we’re still working on our campy fits. Support local LGBTQ+ accountability news and grab your tickets here.
Among the many young Republicans on the pro-Nazi Young Republican group chat that got leaked to Politico last week was Rachel Hope — the events chair1 of the Arizona Young Republicans, who formerly worked on Republican U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani’s campaign, the Green Valley News reported.
What’s funny about Ciscomani palling around with Nazi sympathizers, you ask?
We’d say both his feeble response to questions about it and his MAGA base’s reaction to his eventual condemnation are pretty funny.
Green Valley’s Dan Shearer asked Ciscomani for comment on Thursday morning, and his congressional office sent Shearer to the campaign, which didn’t answer.
After the close of business on Friday, Ciscomani tweeted both a condemnation and a deflection.
“These individuals have never worked for or been affiliated with our campaign in any capacity — they briefly volunteered once through an outside organization, and no one on our team can even identify them,” he wrote.
That em dash is doing a lot of lifting!
But you really gotta stick around for the final paragraph of the Green Valley story.
“Ciscomani’s tweet was met by a tirade of negative comments from MAGA tweeters, blasting him for being a RINO who needs to ‘grow a spine,’ calling him a ‘cuck’ among other epithets, and saying ‘We want the group chat people to replace you at least they have cajone.’ ‘This is late and not one gives a shit anymore,’ one wrote.”
Hope has refused to resign from the Arizona Young Republicans.
Time for ASU to be clear about the Trump "Compact." It's one thing to go to a closed door White House meeting, but ASU needs to get candid about both its legal concerns about the compact, and what areas of "shared principles" involving higher ed it has with the Trump Administration. Transparency please!
Some people like him and some don’t but he is a force. Michael Crow. The economic engine that is ASU serves student, staff, the state, country and internationally. It was never something I envisioned for an Arizona University but it’s been interesting to see the growth and fun to see the energy he’s brought to the state. The negotiations he is having with the White House, behind closed doors, apparently, seems better than U of A surveying what everyone thinks. Herding cats. Getting no where with the WH. That’s not getting to the problem. You have to talk it out. The longer you can bully a bully the more you can achieve. Trump isn’t smart, sorry. He’s only focused on blowing stuff up and causing pain. My bets on Crow.