Arizona Executes First Inmate in Two Years

UPDATE Mar 19, 2025 1:32 PM CDT

An Arizona man who kidnapped and murdered his girlfriend's ex-husband was executed Wednesday, the second of four prisoners scheduled to be put to death this week in the US, per the AP. Aaron Brian Gunches, 53, was lethally injected with pentobarbital at the Arizona State Prison Complex in the town of Florence. Gunches fatally shot Ted Price in the desert outside the Phoenix suburb of Mesa in 2002. Executions in Florida and Arkansas are scheduled for Thursday.

Mar 19, 2025 12:33 PM CDT

An Arizona man who pleaded guilty to first-degree murder was scheduled to be executed Wednesday in the state's first use of the death penalty in more than two years. Aaron Brian Gunches, 53, was slated to be lethally injected with pentobarbital at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence, per the AP. Gunches fatally shot Ted Price, his girlfriend's ex-husband, in the desert outside the Phoenix suburb of Mesa in 2002. Gunches was arrested in January 2003 after being pulled over by an Arizona Department of Public Safety trooper near the California state line. Gunches shot the trooper, who was saved by a bulletproof vest. Gunches was charged with first-degree murder and kidnapping in October 2003. He pleaded guilty in 2007.

He is the second of four death row prisoners in the US set to be executed this week. Louisiana executed a man on Tuesday and two more executions were scheduled in Florida and Oklahoma on Thursday. Gunches will be the first person executed in a state with a Democrat serving as governor since 2017. The two executions in Virginia that year were the last one before the state abolished the death penalty. Gunches' execution had originally been scheduled for April 2023, but was called off after Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs ordered a review of the state's death penalty procedures. Late last year, Hobbs fired the retired judge she had appointed to conduct the review, and the state's corrections department announced changes in the team that lethally injects death row prisoners.

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Gunches, who represented himself, asked the Arizona Supreme Court in 2022 to issue an execution warrant against him to give closure to Price's family. He later withdrew the request. The execution was scheduled anyway but later postponed amid the review ordered by Hobbs. In late December, Gunches asked the state's highest court to skip legal formalities and schedule his execution as soon as possible, saying his death sentence was "long overdue." The court refused the request and later set his execution date for Wednesday. No last-minute reprieves are expected for Gunches, despite objections by lawyers who say injecting someone with pentobarbital in large amounts has been shown to drown people in their own fluids. (More execution stories.)