Executions will resume in Arizona after a two-year pause, the state's top prosecutor says.
In a statement shared with CBS News on Wednesday, Arizona Attorney General Chris Mayes said she will soon seek an execution warrant for Aaron Brian Guanches after he pleaded guilty to murdering his girlfriend's ex-husband. Is on death sentence.
“My office has been preparing since the beginning of this year to resume executions in Arizona,” Mayes said. “In May, I indicated that executions would resume in early 2025. In accordance with that timeline, I plan to move forward and request an execution warrant from the Arizona Supreme Court for Aaron Brian Gunches in the coming weeks. Will, who was sentenced to death for the murder of Ted Price.”
Mayes said his office is working with state corrections officials to review and improve death penalty procedures. “I am confident that the execution can now proceed in compliance with state and federal law,” Mayes said in his statement.
Governor Katie Hobbs had promised that no executions would be carried out until there was confidence that the state could do so without violating any laws. The Attorney General's Office had said it would not seek a court order to impose the death penalty while the review is ongoing.
The review Hobbs ordered effectively ended this month when he rejected it retired federal magistrate He was previously appointed to lead the review.
Christian Slater, a spokesman for the governor, said Hobbs is “committed to upholding the law while ensuring justice is administered in a transparent and humane manner.”
Corrections officials “conducted a thorough review of policies and procedures and made significant improvements to help state executions meet legal and constitutional standards,” Slater said.
Guanches was scheduled to be executed in April 2023. But Hobbs' office said the state was not prepared to impose the death penalty because it lacked the staff with expertise to carry out executions. At the time, she also said that she could not get an IV team to administer the fatal injection and that she had no contract with a pharmacist to compound the pentobarbital needed for the execution.
Guanches had pleaded guilty to murder charges in the shooting death of Price, his girlfriend's ex-husband, near the Phoenix suburb of Mesa.
Arizona was last scheduled to carry out three executions in 2022, after a gap of nearly eight years due to criticism of its 2014 executions and difficulties obtaining drugs for executions. in 2014, joseph wood His execution involved 15 doses of a combination of two drugs given over two hours The lawyers said it's messed upWood sniffled repeatedly and gasped more than 600 times before he died.
The execution of 66-year-old Clarence Dixon in 2022 ended a nearly eight-year break. Dixon, convicted of murdering 21-year-old Arizona State University student Deanna Bowdoin, died by lethal injection at the state prison in Florence, Arizona.