Aaron Gunches

USA - Arizona. Aaron Gunches, 53, White, was executed

March 19, 2025:

March 19, 2025 - Arizona. Aaron Gunches, 53, White, was executed

The “volunteer” died after a lengthy legal battle

At 10:33 a.m. on March 19, Aaron Gunches died by lethal injection as punishment for the murder of Ted Price in November 2002.

Gunches’ execution was attended by five media witnesses, members of Ted Price’s family and legal advisors for both Gunches and Price’s family. 

Gunches was transferred to the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence on Tuesday night after his last meal, which consisted of a double western burger, spicy gyros, onion rings and baklava.

On Wednesday morning at 10:02, Gunches was brought into the execution chamber and laid down on the table by five corrections staff members. 

Four members of a medical team, their identities shielded by masks and white hoodies, inserted IVs in both of his arms. At 10:14, he was asked if he had any last words. Gunches only shook his head. An executioner in another room injected pentobarbital into lines that led to the IVs.

Gunches barely moved and squeezed his eyes shut. He exhaled hard seven or eight times and then remained motionless.

His heart stopped and he was pronounced dead at 10:33. 

Gunches was sentenced to death for the November 2002 killing of his girlfriend's ex-husband Ted Price, 40.

Through two trials (one sentence was thrown out by the Arizona Supreme Court), Gunches insisted on acting as his own attorney and then refused to offer any defense at all, committing what one judge called “suicide by jury” and being “the architect of his own disaster,” according to one of his former court-appointed attorneys. 

Similarly, he scrapped his chances at filing appeals, and in 2018, started petitioning the Arizona Supreme Court and the Arizona Attorney General’s Office to speed up his execution.

He nearly succeeded in 2022, when then-Attorney General Mark Brnovich secured a warrant for execution from the Supreme Court. But Brnovich was already out of office by the scheduled execution date. His successor, Kris Mayes, let the warrant lapse pending a review of the state’s execution protocols, long under scrutiny because of past shortcomings, including a seriously botched 2014 execution that took nearly two hours.

Gov. Katie Hobbs hired retired federal Magistrate Judge David Duncan as an independent commissioner and tasked him with evaluating the state’s lethal injection methods and offering suggestions for improvements. But Duncan’s preliminary findings were damning, and Hobbs and Mayes were under pressure to carry out the Gunches execution because Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell was asking the court to issue a warrant. 

Hobbs fired Duncan. Mayes obtained a new death warrant.

But then anti-death penalty advocates took up Duncan’s findings. A Virginia law professor who is an expert on lethal injection filed an amicus brief noting mounting evidence that pentobarbital, the drug used by the state in executions, caused a painful and terrifying death likened to water-boarding torture, even though the outward appearance is that the prisoner just went to sleep. Former FDA officials and pharmacists weighed in, as well, claiming the drug use violated state and federal law and was likely past its expiration date. 

The court and the state went forward anyway.

Retired federal public defender Dale Baich, one of Gunches’ legal observers at the execution, said that although his death appeared to happen without suffering, scientific studies have found that “rapid administration of a high dose of pentobarbital is excruciatingly painful.”

“Pulmonary edema develops in seconds as the lungs fill with water and one is not able to breathe. There is a sensation of drowning from within and not being able to do anything about it. It is like being waterboarded to death,” he said in a statement to the Arizona Mirror. “The eight deep breaths and chest heaving, the gurgling sounds, and Mr. Gunches trying to catch his breath, are all signs of pulmonary edema. Even though it may have looked peaceful, it was not.”

Gunches il the 1st inmate to be put to death in Arizona this year, the 41st overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1992, the 8th this year in U.S., and the No. 1615 since the U.S. resumed executions in 1977.

On Gunches’ case see also HoC 14/02/2008, 16/06/2010, 03/03/2023, 01/04/2023.

Arizona executes Aaron Gunches for 2002 murder after lengthy legal battle