Arizona killed Frank Atwood by lethal injection on Wednesday morning, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final appeal. The 66-year-old Atwood was sentenced to death in 1984 for the murder and abduction of 8-year-old Vicki Lynn Hoskinson.
It was the second execution in two months in Arizona. The state killed Clarence Dixon in May, its first execution since 2014, when Joseph Wood was executed in a botched lethal injection procedure.
Atwood “remained calm through the entire thing,” KOLD-TV reporter Bud Foster, who witnessed the execution, reported afterward. Foster said a Greek Orthodox priest was in the chamber with Atwood during the killing, the first time a spiritual advisor had been permitted inside. In another first, witnesses were present when the executioners brought Atwood in. Foster estimated about 40 people were in the room watching, including Atwood’s wife, whom Atwood “smiled at several times.
“We saw the entire process,” Foster said. “It was very clinical. Very, very clinical.”