Arizona attorney general seeking another execution warrant

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said Tuesday that he has notified the state Supreme Court that his office intends to seek a warrant of execution for death row inmate Murray Hooper.

It would be the third execution warrant issued this year in Arizona.

Clarence Wayne Dixon was executed on May 11 for the 1978 murder of a 21-year-old Arizona State University student and Frank Atwood died June 8 by lethal injection at the state prison in Florence for the 1984 murder of an 8-year-old Tucson girl.

Dixon’s execution was Arizona’s first after a nearly eight-year hiatus.

The Attorney General’s Office said there are 111 inmates on Arizona’s death row and 22 have exhausted their appeals.

Hooper and two co-defendants were sentenced to death for the New Year’s Eve 1980 murders of a Phoenix man and his mother-in-law during a home robbery.

The other two men died before their sentences could be carried out.

“Our state recognizes that those who commit the most heinous crimes deserve the ultimate punishment,” Brnovich said in a statement Tuesday. “It is the appropriate response and we must faithfully carry out the court-ordered sentences for the victims, their families and our communities.”