Death row inmate executed in Arizona, third in US this month
A 53-year-old man convicted of murder was executed by lethal injection on Wednesday, becoming the third person to be executed in the United States this month.
Death row inmate Aaron Gunches had fought for more than a decade to be put to death for the 2002 murder of his then-girlfriend's ex-boyfriend, even recently waiving his right to a clemency hearing, News.Az reports, citing ABC News.
The execution began just after 10 a.m. local time at the Arizona State Prison Complex-Florence. It took about 18 minutes for Gunches to die, according to media witnesses.
Asked by prison officials if he had any last words, Gunches shook his head no and closed his eyes, according to the media witnesses. A short time later, the lethal injection of pentobarbital was administered into his left arm, the witnesses said.
The time of death, according to the witnesses, was 10:33 a.m.
Gunches was first person executed in Arizona since 76-year-old Murray Hooper, convicted of murdering two people in 1980, was given the ultimate punishment in November 2022.
Gunches was arrested for kidnapping and killing 40-year-old Ted Price in 2002 by shooting him four times in the Arizona desert near Mesa. Gunches pleaded guilty to the charges in 2007. In 2022, he asked the Arizona Supreme Court to issue an execution warrant. The state Supreme Court honored his request, issuing the execution warrant on Feb. 11.
Price's daughter, Brittney Kay, said she was just a child when her father was murdered and didn't have many memories of him.
Gunches was the third person executed in the United States in March and the eighth this year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
On Tuesday evening, convicted murderer Jessie Hoffman Jr. was executed at the Louisiana State Penitentiary with a lethal dose of nitrogen gas, marking the first time that state has used the controversial method after resuming executions following a 15-year hiatus. Hoffman was convicted of killing a 28-year-old Mary "Molly" Eliott in New Orleans in 1996.
On March 7, Brad Sigmon was executed by firing squad at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, South Carolina. The 67-year-old Sigmon, the first U.S. prisoner in 15 years to die by firing squad, was convicted in 2002 of killing his ex-girlfriend's parents, David and Gladys Larke, by beating them with a baseball bat at the couple's home in Greenville County, South Carolina.
Twenty-one additional executions have been scheduled in nine states for 2025, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
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