Arizona on track, for now, for 1st execution since 2014

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona remains on track, at least for now, to use the death penalty for the first time in nearly eight years.

The condemned prisoner is being given the option of being put to death by the gas chamber.

Clarence Dixon’s warrant for execution sets a Thursday deadline for deciding whether he will be put to death with an injection of pentobarbital or with hydrogen cyanide gas.

He was convicted of murder in a 1977 killing.

Lethal injection is the default method if Dixon doesn’t make a choice.

The United States’ last gas chamber execution occurred in 1999 in Arizona.