PHOENIX—A prisoner scheduled to be executed next week in what would be Arizona’s first use of the death penalty in over two years has passed up a chance to ask for a reprieve from his death sentence.
Aaron Brian Gunches, 53, did not participate in a hearing Monday before the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency, which noted on the record that he has waived his right to ask for a sentence commutation or a reprieve. There was no public comment during the minutes-long hearing.
Gunches is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on March 19 for his murder conviction in the 2002 shooting death of Ted Price, his girlfriend’s ex-husband, near the Phoenix suburb of Mesa. Gunches, who isn’t a lawyer but is representing himself, made an unsuccessful bid late last year to skip legal formalities and schedule his execution earlier than authorities were aiming for. His death sentence was “long overdue,” Gunches told Arizona’s highest court, which rejected the request. Price’s sister, Karen Price, said Ted was killed because he had threatened to report his girlfriend to child welfare authorities for doing drugs in front of her children.
“Ted wasn’t going to stand for that,” Karen Price said, describing him as a good person with compassion who stood up for people who couldn’t defend themselves.
Price said she isn’t looking forward to Gunches’ execution, but she does want to have “the whole legal system and everything associated with it behind me.” In a Feb. 20 filing, Gunches said he didn’t want to be present at Monday’s hearing and noted he made a brief virtual appearance earlier before the board to confirm a clemency waiver he made in 2022.
“My position has not changed,” Gunches wrote in the recent filing.
The Arizona Supreme Court issued a death warrant for Gunches nearly two years ago, but the sentence wasn’t carried out because the state’s Democratic attorney general agreed not to pursue executions during a review of the state’s death penalty protocol. The review ended in November when Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs dismissed the retired federal magistrate judge she had appointed to examine execution procedures.
Arizona, which has 112 prisoners on death row, last carried out three executions in 2022 following a nearly eight-year hiatus brought on by criticism that a 2014 execution was botched and because of difficulties obtaining drugs for execution.
Since then, the state has been criticized for taking too long to insert an IV for lethal injection into a condemned prisoner. One significant change made by corrections officials after the criticism was forming a new, larger team to insert IVs into condemned prisoners.
The Arizona Legislature is considering a proposal aimed at changing the state’s method of execution. If approved by lawmakers, the proposal would ask voters in 2026 to replace lethal injection with a firing squad.
Currently, Arizona death row prisoners whose crimes occurred before Nov. 23, 1992, can choose between lethal injection or the gas chamber, which was refurbished in late 2020 and was last used for an execution in 1999.
Under current law, those who decline to make the choice or whose crimes occurred after the November 1992 date are to be executed by lethal injection. The proposed ballot measure would keep lethal gas as one of Arizona’s two execution methods for those whose crimes occurred before the 1992 date.
