Attorney General Kris Mayes has officially motioned for a briefing schedule with the state Supreme Court in a legal maneuver that could reintroduce Arizona’s use of the death penalty; this legal filing is directly related to the execution request of death row inmate Aaron Brian Gunches, who was convicted of killing Ted Price in 2002, according to the Arizona Attorney General’s office.
Despite the gravity of such an act, the Arizona Attorney General is prepared to fulfill her role; she stated, “This is not a decision that I have made lightly, but the death penalty is the law in our state, and it is my job to uphold it,” and she underlined the predicament the family of the slain Ted Price has endured over the two-decade span, a stretch during which, Attorney General Mayes added,
The proceedings follow the legal frameworks outlined in A.R.S. § 13-759(A) and Arizona Rule of Criminal Procedure 31.23(b), as specified in the accompanying documents from the Arizona Attorney General’s petition for the Warrant of Execution.
It should be noted that the next steps invite an examination of how justice interacts with longstanding law; the Arizona death penalty remains a source of contention, but it appears that this filing may represent an incremental step toward the state reengaging with what is, after all, a sanctioned but deeply troubling component of its judicial system. What is clear is that the state, represented by AG Mayes, is initiating a formal procedure that might lead to Gunches’ execution, ensuring what the AG refers to as “justice” that has been elusive for more than two decades, according to the Arizona Attorney General.