Arizona Supreme Court allows execution of death-row inmate Murray Hooper to proceed

PHOENIX - The Arizona Supreme Court is allowing the state to move forward with the execution for death row inmate Murray Hooper next month.

The state’s high court granted the motion for a warrant of execution Wednesday.

The 76-year-old will die by lethal injection or gas on Nov. 16, according to the warrant signed by four justices. The other three recused themselves.

Kelly Culshaw, an assistant federal public defender representing Hooper, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Hooper would be the third inmate put to death this year after Arizona recently resumed carrying out executions.

He 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.

Murray Hooper (Arizona Department of Correction, Rehabilitation and Reentry)

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

MORE: Murray Hooper: Arizona could soon execute a 3rd death row inmate

When Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced in July he intended to seek the warrant, he called death "the appropriate response ... for the victims, their families and our communities."

The state hadn’t executed anyone for nearly eight years before Clarence Dixon died by lethal injection in May for the 1978 murder of a 21-year-old Arizona State University student.

Frank Atwood was executed in June at the state prison in Florence for the 1984 killing of an 8-year-old Tucson girl.

There are 111 inmates on Arizona’s death row, and 22 have exhausted their appeals, according to the Attorney General’s Office.