An Arizona death row inmate asked the state's highest court to waive legal formalities and schedule his execution ahead of authorities' goal, as it has done in the past to carry out his death sentences.
The execution of Aaron Brian Guanches would symbolize the restart Use of capital punishment in Arizona After a two-year pause when it reviewed its procedures.
In a handwritten court filing this week, Guanches asked the state Supreme Court to schedule his execution for mid-February if convicted of murder in the 2002 murder of Ted Price. He had filed a similar petition in November 2022 demanding the court to issue a death warrant for him, saying he wanted justice to be “delivered legally and the victim's family be given a way.”
they took it back Offer in January 2023Citing three recent executions, he said they were “carried out in a manner that amounts to torture.”
In his most recent filing, Guanches, who is not a lawyer but is representing himself, said his death sentence was “long overdue” and sought a legal briefing schedule for the execution from the state court. Was pulling. ,
The office of Attorney General Chris Mayes, which is seeking Guanches' execution, said a briefing schedule is needed to ensure corrections officers can meet execution requirements, such as testing for pentobarbital, which was used in his execution. Will be done for lethal injection.
Guanches was scheduled to be executed in April 2023. But Governor Katie Hobbs' office said the state was not prepared to impose the death penalty because it lacked the staff with expertise to carry out executions.
Hobbs, a Democrat, had promised not to carry out any executions until confident that the state could do so without violating any laws. The review that Hobbs ordered effectively ended in November when he fired the retired federal magistrate judge he had appointed to lead the review.
Guanches pleaded guilty to murder in the shooting death of his girlfriend's ex-husband Price near the Phoenix suburb of Mesa.
Arizona, which has 111 inmates on death row, last carried out three executions in 2022, after a gap of nearly eight years due to criticism of a 2014 execution failure and difficulties in obtaining drugs for executions.
Since then, the state has been criticized for taking too long to insert an IV into a convicted inmate for a lethal injection.