Arizona prisoner Aaron Gunches scheduled to be executed Wednesday

MESA, AZ — Aaron Brian Gunches, 53, is scheduled to be executed Wednesday at 10 a.m. for the 2002 shooting death of Ted Price, his girlfriend’s ex-husband, near Mesa.

Gunches has said that his death sentence was “long overdue,” fighting in recent years to speed up the process as fast as possible.

The Arizona Supreme Court issued a death warrant for Gunches nearly two years ago, but the sentence wasn’t carried out because Governor Katie Hobbs said the state wasn’t ready. Instead, Gov. Hobbs ordered a review of the state’s death penalty protocol. The review ended in November when Democratic Gov. 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.

In January, ABC15 spoke with Price’s family, who said they wanted the sentence to be carried out.

One significant change made by corrections officials 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 main 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 since it 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.