Leroy McGill: Arizona man convicted of ‘especially cruel’ murder to be executed

PHOENIX – On Wednesday morning, Arizona is scheduled to carry out the death sentence of a convicted murderer. Leroy Dean McGill will be put to death by lethal injection at 10 a.m. for a crime prosecutors called “especially cruel.”

The backstory:

The now-63-year-old was convicted on several counts related to the 2002 murder of Charles Perez. Court records show McGill threw gasoline on Perez and Perez’s girlfriend, Nova Banta, while they were sitting on a couch in an apartment. He lit a match, setting them on fire. Banta survived the attack, and Perez died. Another person in the apartment was not hurt and came to Banta’s aid. McGill had accused the couple of stealing a gun from the apartment before the attack.

In 2004, a jury found McGill guilty of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, arson, and endangerment. He exhausted his appeals in 2022, and the state filed a warrant of execution earlier this year.

Dig deeper:

This will be the first execution in Arizona in 2026. The state carried out one in 2025 and three in 2022. That followed an eight-year hiatus, brought on by issues obtaining execution drugs and criticism over an execution in 2014 where it took more than two hours to put an inmate to death.

Arizona currently has 109 inmates on death row.