/ Modified jun 6, 2022 8:28 a.m.

Judge rejects Arizona prisoner’s bid to delay execution

Frank Atwood is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday.

Barbed wire jail prison hero. With nearly 42,000 incarcerated people, Arizona has one of the largest prison populations in the country.
AZPM Staff

A judge has denied an Arizona prisoner’s bid to delay his execution in the 1984 killing of an 8-year-old girl.

The ruling Saturday by U.S. District Judge Michael Liburdi keeps on track Wednesday's scheduled execution of Frank Atwood, who argued the state’s death penalty procedures would violate his constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment by subjecting him to unimaginable pain.

His lawyers said Atwood, who has a degenerative spinal condition that has left him in a wheelchair would undergo excruciating suffering if he were strapped to a gurney while lying on his back during his lethal injection execution.

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