Aaron Gunches, an inmate on Arizona’s death row, has been executed by lethal injection, breaking a nearly two-year moratorium on the state’s executions.
Four executioners injected Gunches with pentobarbital at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence shortly after 10 a.m. on Wednesday. His time of death was 10:33.
Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry Deputy Director John Barcello announced Gunches’ death in a news conference, stating the execution went according to plan.
IVs were inserted in the inmate’s arms and there was no sign of pain, a media witness said.
Gunches, who was brought into the execution chamber wearing a white jumpsuit, did not look at witnesses and declined to make a final statement.
Gunches, 53, had been convicted of murdering Ted Price, 40, in 2002. Price had gotten into an argument with Gunches’ then-girlfriend who he’d previously dated. Price and the woman had agreed to live together while he went to school to become a radiology technician.
The pair had a serious relationship and Price had become a stay-at-home father to her two children. After their breakup, he temporarily moved back to his native Utah.
When he returned to Arizona, he discovered his ex-girlfriend was living in a home for drug addicts and had developed a methamphetamine habit. At one point, she’d taken the drug with her 14-year-old daughter in front of her son.
The discovery led to an argument between the two, with Gunches later getting involved. Gunches had initially planned to drive Price to a bus station but after he discovered he didn’t have money for a bus ticket, he drove Price to a desert spot near Mesa and shot him four times.
Authorities arrested him in January 2003 after an Arizona Department of Public Safety trooper pulled him over near the California state line. Gunches shot the trooper, who was saved by a bulletproof vest. Detectives discovered the bullet casings near the shooting were a match for ammunition found near Price’s body.
Officials charged him with first-degree murder and kidnapping. He pleaded guilty in 2007 and has long advocated for his death. Recently, he waived his right to a clemency hearing.
It’s not clear if Gunches visited with anyone ahead of his execution. His last meal was a Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger with fries from Carl’s Jr, two sandwiches, onion rings and baklava.
He was the second of four inmates scheduled to be put to death this week across the U.S. On Tuesday, Louisiana executed Jessie Hoffman, a 46-year-old man who’d been on death row for 27 years for the brutal rape and murder of a 28-year-old advertising executive in 1996. It marked the state’s first nitrogen gas execution.
Two other prisoners —Wendell Grissom and Edward Thomas James — are both due to be executed in Oklahoma and Florida on Thursday.
Arizona had paused executions after issues with obtaining lethal injection drugs and procedures in 2023. Gunches was scheduled to first be executed in April of that year.
David K Duncan, a retired federal judge, was later hired to independently analyze and investigate ongoing problems with how the state administers lethal injections.
Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs fired him in November, two weeks before the deadline for his report. Duncan found pentobarbital, a drug for lethal injections, being stored unlabeled in what appeared to be Mason jars. One official directive he uncovered told executioners to look up how to prepare the lethal cocktail “on Wikipedia.”
The same month he was fired, the state’s Department of Corrections Director Ryan Thornell wrote to Hobbs announcing changes to execution protocols and stating his confidence and preparedness to carry out another execution.
Department staff scheduled Gunches’ execution last month. There are currently over 100 people on Arizona’s death row.
Despite its Democratic governor, President Donald Trump won Arizona in the 2024 presidential election. Gunches’ death could be interpreted as a push to up the state’s number of executions.
Shortly after taking office, Trump signed an executive order directing the attorney general to “take all necessary and lawful action” to help states obtain lethal injection drugs to carry out executions. Lethal injection is Arizona’s de facto primary method.
Following the execution, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mays, the state’s top law enforcement officer, said: “Today is an incredibly solemn day.”
“It is my job to enforce the law…As Arizona voters have affirmed and the courts have reinforced, the death penalty is the law of the land.”
