An unusual request.
Death Wish
An Arizona man who’s been on death row for nearly two decades has an unusual request for the state’s highest court: to, essentially, get it over with already.
Generally speaking, attorneys for death row inmates try to delay their executions as long as possible. But as the Associated Press reports, 53-year-old Aaron Gunches has asked the state’s Supreme Court to expedite his “long overdue” execution.
Back in 2004, Gunches pleaded guilty to the 2002 murder of Ted Price, his then-girlfriend’s ex-husband who had been in a violent altercation with the woman. First sentenced to capital punishment in 2008, the man’s initial death sentence was tossed in 2010 over procedural errors.
He was ultimately re-sentenced to death in 2013 and first began seeking his own death warrant in November 2022 — just after the state’s now-attorney general, Kris Mayes, was elected and vowed alongside now-Gov. Katie Hobbs to suspend executions pending a review of the state’s death penalty.
The political pair, both Democrats, had good reason to do so. Back in 2014, one man’s death by lethal injection was botched so significantly that it took nearly two hours to finish, and onlookers said they heard the condemned gasp and snort a horrifying 600 times during the procedure. Additionally, the state’s correctional agency spent taxpayer money to procure ingredients for cyanide gas, which the Nazis used in their concentration camp gas chambers during the Holocaust.
Bad Reviews
As Fox 10 Phoenix reported back in November, Hobbs and Mayes’ death penalty review ultimately fell apart after David Dunkin, the retired judge in charge of it, offered a bunch of strange recommendations.
“You recommend that [Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation & Reentry] conduct executions by firing squad (a method not currently authorized by Arizona law),” a letter from the governor to Dunkin read, “despite the Executive Order’s direction to focus on procurement, protocols, and procedures related to carrying out an execution under existing law.”
With all that context in the rearview, the state AG announced back at the end of November that it would be seeking death warrants again, including for Gunches.
According to the AP, Hobbs’ office says that the only roadblock between the man and his desired destruction now is the testing of the pentobarbital that will be used for his lethal injection.
Still, it remains unclear when he’ll finally get his wish — and after waiting that long, it seems clear that Gunches is ready to go.
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