An Arizona prisoner accused of killing an 8-year-old child nearly 38 years ago was killed by lethal injection Wednesday morning, according to a news release from the state’s attorney general.
Frank Atwood was executed at the Arizona State Prison Complex shortly after 10:15 a.m. local time, according to Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich.
According to the attorney general, Atwood was condemned to death over 35 years ago and has finished all of his appeal possibilities.
“Arizonans will never forget an innocent kid whose life was cruelly snatched and a family that has had to suffer years of agony,” Brnovich said in a statement.
Vicki Lynne Hoskinson died on September 17, 1984, and Atwood was guilty of her murder. Vicki was riding her bike home when Atwood abducted her, murdered her, and dumped her corpse in the desert, according to the attorney general. According to the news announcement, the kid’s remains were discovered by a hiker seven months later.
Before to Vicki’s murder, Atwood was guilty in California of “lewd and lascivious actions and kidnapping” concerning two young kids, according to the attorney general.
Federal courts refused Atwood’s pleas to stay the execution, in which he argued the process would breach his constitutional rights and put him in significant suffering due to a degenerative spinal illness he had. According to court filings, in reply to that worry, state officials agreed to make concessions in their execution process by supplying a gadget that would assist “prevent any needless agony owing to his illness.”
A district court rejected those allegations, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that judgement on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court refused Atwood’s request to stop his execution.
Atwood was the second person killed in Arizona following the botched lethal injection execution of Joseph Wood in 2014, which resulted in a seven-year moratorium on executions in the United States. Wood, who was also killed by fatal injection, battled to breathe for the most of the roughly two hours it took him to die, according to his lawyers at the time.
The governor ordered a review of the procedure, and an independent study issued in 2014 determined that the state’s correctional administration followed protocol in Wood’s execution.
According to the news release, around 111 convicts remain on execution row in the state.
