On Friday, Attorney General Kris Mayes took a step toward obtaining an execution warrant for convicted murderer Aaron Brian Gunches.
Mayes announced last week that she would seek to overturn Arizona’s most recent moratorium on executions. Gunches had been on death row since the 2002 murder of Ted Price, but the state has carried out only three executions in the last decade.
On Friday, Mayes filed a motion with the Arizona Supreme Court to create a briefing timeline for the execution of Gunches’ death sentence.
Why wasn’t previous execution warrant for Aaron Gunches carried out?
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In March 2023, Gov. Katie Hobbs requested a review of the state’s capital penalty processes shortly after taking office, preventing the execution of Gunches’ execution warrant. Mayes responded by declaring that she would refrain from pursuing execution warrants until the completion of the study.
Hobbs engaged a retired judge to conduct the review, but Mayes claims he failed to deliver a relevant report.
Around the same time, the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry conducted its own assessment of the execution procedure.
Mayes stated that the review’s results provided her confidence to proceed forward with the Gunches case.
“We’re doing this because we believe that the Department of Corrections is prepared and ready to to resume executions, and this particular death row inmate has exhausted his appeals. … The death penalty is the law of Arizona, and as the attorney general it is my responsibility to uphold the law,” she said.
Why is Aaron Gunches on death row?
Gunches pled guilty in 2004 to murdering Price, his girlfriend’s ex-husband, two years before. The Arizona Supreme Court recognized an error in the first judgment, leading to his second death sentence in 2013.
Following Joseph Wood’s execution in 2014, the state halted executions. The inmate had to receive 15 doses of a two-drug combination over two hours, according to Wood’s lawyer, which led to a mishandled execution.
Mark Brnovich advocated for the reinstatement of the death penalty while serving as attorney general. After an eight-year delay, the state executed Clarence Dixon, Frank Atwood, and Murray Hooper in 2022.
In November 2022, Gunches petitioned the state Supreme Court to issue a death warrant in his case, stating that he desired justice to “be lawfully served and give closure to the victim’s family.” A month later, Brnovich requested an execution warrant.
However, Gunches withdrew his request in January 2023, citing three recent executions that were “carried out in a manner that amounts to torture” in a handwritten letter to the high court.
However, the Supreme Court declared its obligation to accept the warrant, citing Gunches’s exhaustion of remedies. Hobbs and Mayes, however, put that on hold until they were confident that the state could complete the process without the issues observed in previous cases.