Arizona executions to resume, breaking 2-year pause during review of state death penalty procedures

By ANITA SNOW The Associated Press

FILE - Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes pauses during an interview with The Associated Press, Nov. 21, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)[ASSOCIATED PRESS/Matt Slocum]

PHOENIX (AP) — Executions will resume in Arizona following a two-year pause, the state’s top prosecutor says.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a statement sent to The Associated Press on Wednesday that she will soon seek an execution warrant for Aaron Brian Gunches, who is on death row after being convicted of killing his girlfriend’s ex-husband.

Mayes said her office had been preparing to resume the use of the death penalty in Arizona since earlier this year as it worked with state corrections officials to review and improve procedures.

Gov. Katie Hobbs had promised not to carry out any executions until there was confidence the state can do so without violating any laws. The attorney general’s office had said it would not seek a court order to carry out the death penalty while a review was underway.

The review Hobbs had ordered effectively ended this month when she dismissed the retired federal magistrate she had appointed earlier to head the review.

The governor’s spokesman, Christian Slater, said Hobbs “remains committed to upholding the law while ensuring justice is carried out in a way that’s transparent and humane.”

Corrections officials “conducted a thorough review of policies and procedures and made critical improvements to help ensure executions carried out by the State meet legal and constitutional standards,” Slater said.

The attorney general said in May that executions could resume by early 2025, after the review was completed.

Mayes said that in line with that timeline she will ask the Arizona Supreme Court in the coming weeks to issue an execution warrant for Gunches, who was sentenced to death for the murder of Ted Price.

Gunches had been set to be put to death in April 2023. But Hobbs’ office said the state wasn’t prepared to enforce the death penalty because it lacked staff with expertise to carry out executions,. At the time, it also said it could not find an IV team to carry out the lethal injection and didn’t have a contract with a pharmacist to compound the pentobarbital needed for an execution.

Gunches had pleaded guilty to a murder charge in the shooting death of Price, who was his girlfriend’s ex-husband, near the Phoenix suburb of Mesa.

Arizona last carried out three executions in 2022 following a nearly eight-year hiatus brought on by criticism that a 2014 execution was botched and because of difficulties obtaining drugs for execution.