PHOENIX — After an eight-year hiatus in executions, Arizona officials have scheduled a second death-row inmate to die this year.
Frank Atwood is scheduled for death on June 8. He can choose to die by lethal injection or the gas chamber.
Atwood was handed a death sentence for the kidnapping and murder of an 8-year-old Tucson girl in 1984. Police say Atwood committed child sex crimes in California, violated his parole and moved to Arizona.
At that point, court documents say Atwood kidnapped Vicki Hoskinson while she rode her bike and later killed her.
He then dumped her body in the desert and fled to Texas until his arrest, according to the court documents.
The Office of the Arizona Attorney General pushed the state in January to move forward with the process to execute Atwood and another man named Clarence Dixon, a convicted rapist and murderer.
The motion was approved in May, and Dixon is scheduled to die on May 11, barring a delay.
The last time Arizona carried out an execution was in 2014 when convicted murderer Joseph Wood died by lethal injection.
Wood’s death became controversial after the purportedly humane execution process took more than two hours while witnesses say he convulsed and gasped for air.
A total of 37 people have been executed in Arizona since capital punishment was reintroduced in 1976, and more than 100 inmates are currently on death row.
Photo of Frank Atwood
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