FLORENCE, Ariz. — An Arizona man who kidnapped and murdered his girlfriend’s ex-husband was executed Wednesday, the second of four prisoners scheduled to be put to death this week in the U.S.
Aaron Brian Gunches, 53, was lethally injected with pentobarbital at the Arizona State Prison Complex in the town of Florence, John Barcello, deputy director of Arizona’s department of corrections, told news outlets. He was pronounced dead at 10:33 a.m.
Gunches fatally shot Ted Price in the desert outside the Phoenix suburb of Mesa in 2002. He pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in 2007.
Sitting up on a gurney, covered with what looked like a white onesie and tucked in with a sheet, Gunches looked straight ahead and had no final words before the execution, witnesses said.
According to Barcello, the prisoner took a few heavy breaths and let out a snoring-type sound after the lethal injection.
“By all accounts, the process went according to plan without any incident at all,” Barcello said.
Gunches’ execution had originally been scheduled for April 2023, but was called off after Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs ordered a review of the state’s death penalty procedures. Late last year, Hobbs fired the retired judge she had appointed to conduct the review, and the state’s corrections department announced changes in the team that lethally injects death row prisoners.
The lethal injection was administered through IVs inserted into Gunches’ arms, according to a handful of news media representatives who witnessed the execution. In the state’s two previous executions, the IV had been inserted into the prisoner’s femoral artery.
The media witnesses reported no visible problems with the execution. But Dale Baich, a former federal public defender who teaches death penalty law at Arizona State …
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