Latest news with #Gunches
The Guardian
23-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Arizona's execution pitted experts against politicians. Experts lost
On Wednesday, 19 March, Arizona executed Aaron Gunches by lethal injection. As ABC News reports, he was put to death for 'kidnapping and killing 40-year-old Ted Price by shooting him four times in the Arizona desert'. Gunches's case was unusual in many ways, not least that he stopped his legal appeals and volunteered to be executed, then changed his mind before changing it again. His execution was scheduled to be carried out almost two years ago. It was put on hold when the Arizona governor, Katie Hobbs, commissioned an independent review of the state's death penalty procedures after a series of botched executions. But over the last several months, she pushed hard to make sure Gunches died for his crime. She even fired the expert retired Judge David Duncan who she had chosen to do that review, before he could complete his report. Her decision to let Duncan go was shocking. At the time, she offered the following explanation: 'Your review has, unfortunately, faced repeated challenges, and I no longer have confidence that I will receive a report from you that will accomplish the purpose and goals of the Executive Order that I issued nearly two years ago.' The governor also noted that the department of corrections, rehabilitation & reentry had conduct 'a comprehensive review of prior executions and has made significant revisions to its policies and procedures'. But doubt about whether she could rely on a review conducted by the group which is in charge of the state's executions in why she appointed Duncan in the first place. That is why I suspect that Hobbs tossed Duncan aside because she didn't like the facts he was finding or the conclusions he seemed to be reaching. Facts are stubborn things, but, in our era, they can be tossed aside with little political cost and no regret. Why rely on expertise if it gets in the way of achieving a result you want to reach? Still, Hobbs's unprecedented decision to 'kill the messenger' was another low moment for a society increasing living by a line uttered by a newspaper editor in the classic movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence: 'When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.' In the world of capital punishment, the 'legend' to which politicians like Hobbs are attached is that it can make America a safer and more just place. They want us to believe that they embrace the death penalty to bring closure to family members of murder victims rather than to accrue political capital. Note what Arizona attorney general Kris Mayes said during a news conference following the execution: 'An execution is the most serious action that the state takes, and I assure you that it is not taken lightly. Today, Arizona resumed the death penalty, and justice for Ted Price and his family was finally served.' After Gunches's death, the sister of the man he murdered echoed that sentiment. Karen Price called the execution 'the final chapter in a process that has spanned nearly 23 years'. Ted Price's daughter added that Gunches's death means that she will no longer have to revisit 'the circumstances surrounding my father's death' as she had to for over two decades of seemingly endless legal proceedings. 'Today,' she said, 'marks the end of that painful chapter, and I couldn't be more grateful'. That chapter would not have ended if Governor Hobbs had been willing to listen to her own expert. Before being sacked, Judge Duncan prepared a draft of his report and wrote a letter to the governor's office previewing his conclusions. He called lethal injection an unreliable method of execution and said: 'Drug manufacturers don't allow states to use the appropriate drugs.' Duncan had spent nearly two years reviewing Arizona's use of lethal injections. As he explained, 'Early on, I thought lethal injection would work. The more I learned about it I learned that that was a false hope.' Duncan told the governor that, in his view, using lethal injection was too risky. In his view, the best course would be for Arizona to adopt the firing squad because 'it has the lowest botch rate.' That was not the news Hobbs hoped her expert would deliver, so she let Duncan go. It seems he just didn't understand that she wanted him to ease the way toward a resumption of lethal injection executions rather than suggesting that the state should not execute anyone until it could adopt what he considered to be a better method. And Duncan was not the only one raising questions about Arizona's resumption of lethal injection executions. Last January, law professor Corinna Lain, a leading expert on lethal injection, said: 'The evidence is overwhelming that Arizona cannot lawfully carry out an execution by lethal injection at this time. Its pentobarbital protocol is sure or very likely to cause a tortuous death even in the best of circumstances.' She went on to say: 'The circumstances here are far from optimal. The State is on the cusp of using an inexperienced, untrained team to inject likely expired drugs stored in unmarked mason jars that were produced by a company that does not make drugs for human consumption and that will be compounded by a pharmacy that the … (the state) itself has previously disavowed.' Disregarding expert knowledge is very much in fashion in many areas of American life, not just where the death penalty is concerned. The Atlantic's Tom Nichols explains that 'Trump allies make noises about expert failures … [and] demonize what its constituents believe was the medical establishment's attempt to curtail civil rights during the coronavirus pandemic.' He argues that Elon Musk's attack on civil servants is really an attack on the 'very notion of apolitical expertise.' But, as Nichols explains, such doubt is not confined to Washington DC. It is found in the 'homes of ordinary American families'. There, 'knowledge of every kind is also under attack. Parents argue with their child's doctor over the safety of vaccines. Famous athletes speculate that the world might actually be flat. College administrators ponder dropping algebra from the curriculum because students keep failing it.' So, it is not surprising that the attack on knowledge would infect decisions about how to end the lives of people condemned to death. Political leaders – including Democrats like Hobbs – know they can play into the burgeoning culture of disrespect for what experts have to say, so they dispense with Duncan and ignore Lain. The more publicly they display that disrespect, the more politically they can benefit. It wasn't always this way when decisions had to be made about methods of execution. At the end of the 19th century, before New York decided to abandon hanging, the state convened a commission to consider and recommend alternatives. That commission sought out the best minds to help them make their decision. It chose the electric chair. The decision whether electrocution 'would be by Alternating Current (AC) or Direct Current (DC)' was informed by a competition between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse, both pioneers in the development of electricity. That was then. Today, as the Arizona example shows, such expertise does not govern the choice of execution methods. In the wake of the Gunches execution, Governor Hobbs and the 'down with experts crowd' may feel vindicated because nothing seemed to have gone awry. But they should not rest easy, and neither should any of the 112 inmates on Arizona's death row. Studies have shown that lethal injection has the worst track record of any method of execution used in the last century in this country. That is why it is only a matter of time before an execution in Arizona proves the folly of ignoring experts and the insights they offer.
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Yahoo
Aaron Gunches executed in Arizona: What to know
The state of Arizona has executed someone for the first time in two years. Aaron Gunches, who advocated for his death, was executed at 10:33 a.m. Wednesday at a prison facility in Florence. Gunches was sentenced to death for the 2002 murder of Ted Price, a former longtime boyfriend of Gunches' girlfriend. Gunches kidnapped and shot Price multiple times in a desert area off the Beeline Highway. He was the first person killed by the state of Arizona since 2022 and the fourth since 2014. The Arizona Republic was one of the media outlets that was allowed to observe Gunches' execution. Here's everything you need to know. Gunches' last meal included a double "Western" bacon cheeseburger with fries, a spicy gyro, a barbecue gyro and onion rings, according to an Arizona Department of Corrections spokesperson. For dessert, he had baklava. At least 18 people witnessed Gunches' execution, according to media witnesses. Among the witnesses were Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, prisons Director Ryan Thornell and Karen Price, Ted Price's sister. Gunches had one legal witness and one nonlegal witness. Republic reporter Jimmy Jenkins was one of five journalists who observed the execution. Witnesses said there appeared to be no struggle with inserting the IVs into Gunches' arms. IV placement has been an issue. The last three men executed by lethal injection were: Clarence Dixon, Frank Atwood and Murray Hooper. The execution teams struggled to insert IVs into all three men, resorting to using a femoral vein in two instances. Media witnesses on Wednesday said at a briefing that the process appeared to go smoothly. A spokesperson for the Department of Corrections said the execution went according to plan. Gunches, who wore a white jumpsuit with white socks, was read his death warrant after the IV needles were inserted into each of his arms. Asked if he had any last words, he shook his head "no." There was a four-person IV team and drugs were administered beginning at 10:14 a.m., witnesses said. Within 2 minutes, Gunches began to show signs of the drugs taking effect, witnesses said. They reported he exhaled loudly several times. Then they said he appeared to stop moving and the color slowly drifted from his face. At 10:22 a.m., a medical team member checked Gunches' pulse. The room was quiet for nearly 10 minutes until an official announced the time of death through an intercom, witnesses said. Ted Price, a former longtime boyfriend of Gunches' girlfriend, moved to Arizona in 2002 and was waiting on a college grant to become a radiology technician. He intended to stay with his ex-girlfriend, but upon arriving, Price found that she was living in a flop house for drug addicts in Mesa, Price's family told USA TODAY. Price was a quiet but kind person who loved cats and muscle cars, his family told USA TODAY. Price was a stay-at-home dad to his ex-girlfriend's two children for 10 years before their separation, according to his sister, Karen Price. He had begun studying to become a radiology technician in Utah after the breakup and was to continue that education in Arizona. On Nov. 14, 2002, Price and his ex began arguing, and it got increasingly heated, ending when she hit Price with a telephone, according to court records. Gunches arrived at the apartment later that evening and directed the woman's roommates to put Price and his belongings in a car to take him to the bus station. But Gunches didn't end up having money for a bus ticket, so he and one of the roommates drove Price out of Mesa, according to court records. When they reached a desolate desert area, Gunches and Price got out of the car, and Gunches shot Price four times, one of the roommates told investigators. Gunches and the roommate returned to Mesa, only stopping once to dispose of Price's belongings in a dumpster, according to court records. Price's body was discovered days later. On Jan. 15, 2003, Gunches was arrested in La Paz County after shooting an Arizona Department of Public Safety trooper during a traffic stop. The officer was hit in his Kevlar vest and survived. Investigators matched the bullets used in the La Paz County shooting with those used in Price's death, according to court records. Karen Price said at the post-execution briefing that she struggled to find the words to convey what the execution of her brother's killer meant to her and her family. But she said she felt justice was served. She said she was grateful for all those who were involved in helping the family through the long legal process. She said her brother's two children have spent more than half their lives without their father. The Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry released a statement on Wednesday morning from Brittney Price, Ted Price's daughter. "I have waited for this moment for 23 long years. Today as I close this chapter of my life, I feel a huge weight has been lifted, allowing me to breathe for the first time in a long time. I can finally begin to move forward with my life," Brittney Price said. "The pain of reliving the circumstances surrounding my father's death for over two decades has taken a significant toll on my family and me. Today marks the end of that painful chapter and I couldn't be more grateful. " Mayes, who witnessed the execution, said it was a solemn day that Price's family had waited more than two decades for. "Today, Arizona resumed the death penalty, and justice for Ted Price and his family was finally served," Mayes said. Mitchell said in a statement after the briefing that seeking the death penalty was the most serious decision she makes and noted it was reserved for "the worst of the worst in our society." "It also brings justice to victims and families of those who are harmed in horrific ways," Mitchell said. "While ending a life is never something to be celebrated, it is a penalty provided for in law. It serves to provide some closure and relief for those who often have been waiting for decades.' State Rep. Patty Contreras, D-Phoenix, lamented Gunches' execution in a floor speech at the Arizona House of Representatives, noting capital punishment was banned in 23 states and not allowed in most countries around the world. She called it 'disheartening' that Arizona had resumed the use of the death penalty and urged the governor and attorney general to reconsider moving ahead with any future executions. Gunches' legal witness said though everything appeared peaceful on the outside, the lethal drugs used on him were known to "be excruciatingly painful" because the lungs fill with water. "There is a sensation of drowning from within and not being able to do anything about it. It is like being waterboarded to death," Dale Baich added. On taking office in 2023, Gov. Katie Hobbs and Mayes, both Democrats, suspended executions pending a review of the state's capital punishment system by an independent commissioner. Hobbs said the review was needed because "Arizona has a history of mismanaged executions that have resulted in serious questions and concerns" about the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry's execution protocols and lack of transparency. But the governor ended the review before it was finished, saying she had lost confidence in the effort. County Attorney Mitchell, a Republican, had been putting pressure on Mayes to pursue Gunches' execution and eventually attempted to get his death warrant from the Arizona Supreme Court on her own, challenging the attorney general's exclusive authority to make such a request. Mitchell's efforts, however, were rendered moot after Mayes filed a death warrant request, which was granted by the court in February. Hobbs cited an "execution preparedness" review that the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry sent her on Nov. 22 as proof the state was ready to proceed with putting prisoners to death. Eyewitness account: Arizona promises transparent resumption of death penalty. For witnesses, much is unseen This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Aaron Gunches executed in Arizona: What to know
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Yahoo
Arizona executes first death row inmate since 2022
March 20 (UPI) -- Arizona has executed a 53-year-old man convicted of kidnapping and murdering his girlfriend's former partner in 2002, marking the first death by the state since 2022. Death row inmate Aaron Gunches was executed by lethal injection at the Arizona State Prison Complex-Florence on Wednesday morning. The execution was scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. MST. He was declared dead at 10:33 a.m., according to the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry. "The process went according to plan and without incident," the department said in a statement. Gunches pleaded guilty in 2007 to first-degree murder and kidnapping and was sentenced to death for fatally shooting Ted Prince four times -- three times in the chest and once to the back of the head -- in an isolated area of the Arizona desert near Mesa, a city located east of Phoenix, in November 2002. Wearing a white jumpsuit, Gunches was escorted into the small execution chamber at 10:01 a.m. and strapped to a gurney. The drug protocol began at 10:13 a.m. and was completed six minutes later. Gunches declined to have a spiritual advisor present and when asked if he would like to issue a last verbal statement, he shook his head no, Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry Director John Barcelo told reporters during a press conference that followed the execution. His last meal consisted of a western bacon cheeseburger, fries a spicy gyro, a BBQ gyro, onion rings and baklava for dessert, Barcelo said. "An execution is the most serious action the state takes and I assure you that it is not taken lightly but as the chief law enforcement officer in Arizona it is my job to enforce the law," Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes told reporters in the press conference. "The family of Ted Price has been waiting for justice for more than two decades. They deserve closure." Price was the ex-partner of Katherine Lecher, Gunches girlfriend in 2002. That November, Price stayed at Lecher's apartment for number of days while waiting for a school grant, according to court documents. On the 10th day, the former couple began to fight, and Lecher told Price to leave before hitting him in the face with a telephone. When Gunches came to the apartment that evening, he told Lecher and her roommate to put Price's belongings in the car, and he instructed them to drive out of Mesa, where he instructed them to stop in an isolated desert area. While Gunches rummaged through the trunk of the car, Price exited the vehicle. Gunches then shot Price four times. Each wound, the coroner concluded, would have been fatal, the court documents state. Gunches waived his right to counsel and represented himself during the trial. After pleading guilty, he was sentenced to death by a jury in 2008, but the court later ordered a new penalty phase, ruling that evidence did not support the sentence. A second jury sentenced him to death in August 2013. He then waived his remaining appeals and remedies. He was originally scheduled to be executed in 2023, but Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs ordered a review of execution protocols. On Feb. 11, the Arizona Supreme Court issued a warrant of his execution. "If Ted were alive today he would be 63 years old," Karen Price, Ted Price's younger sister by 15 months, said during the press conference. "I'd like to imagine we would both be enjoying our retirement and perhaps planning a trip together rather than me coming here to witness the execution of the man who took his life." She said it was important to her family that everyone understands why her brother was killed. She said after Ted Price and Lecher broke up, he moved back to Utah to pursue his studies as a radiology technician. He was staying at her place temporarily in November 2002 until school housing became available as he was transferring to an institution in Arizona that would permit him to graduate earlier. Citing police records and documents, Karen Price said Lecher had started using methamphetamine following her breakup with Ted Price and when he came to her apartment he was surprised by this development. She said the argument that preceded his death was over Ted Price confronting Lecher about her doing methamphetamine with her teenage daughter in front of her son and his threat to contact police about the situation of the home. After hitting Ted Price with the telephone, Lecher, Karen Price alleged, called Gunches who arrived at the house not long afterward. "Ted just wanted to protect the two children that he had cared about. Tragically, he had no idea his threat would lead to his murder at the hands of Katherine Lecher's drug dealer who wanted him silenced," she said. "Ted was killed for doing the right thing, a senseless crime that robbed the world of a genuinely kind man." Gunches is the first person to be killed by Arizona since November 2022, when Murray Hooper was executed for the 1980 murder of Patrick Redmond and Redmond's mother-in-law, Helen Phelps. He is also the second person to be executed in the United States this week and the eighth so far this year.
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Yahoo
A killer wrote his own death warrant and Arizona finally signed it
Photo by Pict Rider | Getty Images When the warden asked if he had any last words, Aaron Gunches squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. He was strapped to a gurney in the execution chamber, waiting to die, projecting a desire to just get it over with after nearly 23 years. In 2002, he killed a man named Ted Price, by taking him out to the desert and putting four bullets in him for reasons he must have imagined made sense. Now, it was his turn and his time to die. On a closed circuit TV screen above the big window into the execution chamber, a hand pushed a plunger, sending the killing drug pentobarbital along a long tube from a control panel in another room into Gunches' veins. Pento kills by inducing pulmonary edema, essentially ripping the lungs apart and filling them with fluids that drown a person in minutes. Experts opine that it is a terrorizing, painful way to die: The drug only renders the drowner unresponsive, but it doesn't mean he can't feel anything. Gunches showed nothing. He kept his eyes closed. He coughed lightly. His hands twitched once or twice. He let out a few huffing breaths, then exhaled with a light snore. After about three minutes, he just laid still. An anonymous voice came over a loudspeaker announcing the time of death: 10:33 a.m. The drugs had taken 18 minutes to do their job. 'The death penalty is the law of the land in Arizona, Attorney General Kris Mayes said an hour or so later in a post-execution press conference. She hit the usual notes: Justice served. Closure. We were told that Gunches' last meal had been a double western cheeseburger and a gyros with onion rings and baklava. It did not sound appetizing. One of Price's sisters expressed her relief that it was finally over. What more could anyone really say? It was never a high-profile case, and it didn't even make the newspapers until eight years after the murder, when the death sentence was thrown out by the Arizona Supreme Court, a rarity. Then the second trial also stayed under the radar, and no one heard of Gunches again until 2023, when he demanded to be executed, and then-Attorney General Mark Brnovich agreed. But then Arizona changed governors and the execution was put off until this year, when politics made it unavoidable. As brutal as the murder was, it probably would not have ended in a death sentence, according to several of his attorneys and one judge, if Gunches hadn't insisted he knew better than anyone else. He was a big man, six feet tall and 210 pounds at the time of his arrest. He cropped his hair short because he was balding. He had jug ears and his face pinched into a permanent squint. His lawyers have described him as 'somehow likeable,' in spite of it all, protective of his friends, rigid in his ideas of good and bad. He was also obstinate and averse to logic once he had made up his mind with his limited and drug-addled reasoning faculties. He came from a dynasty of drug abusers: his grandparents, his father, his father's siblings and several of his cousins. Six served prison time and four died from substance abuse, according to court records. Gunches had suffered more than one head trauma and had to wear dark glasses because of resultant light sensitivity. He would not allow any of that information to be used as mitigation. He insisted on firing his attorneys and defending himself, then did nothing in his own defense. He has, on occasion, told acquaintances that he did not commit the murder, but would not say who had. And he never brought that up in court. His advisory attorneys are still haunted, because they felt they could have helped him reach a plea agreement and a lesser verdict — maybe second-degree murder, maybe less than a life sentence, even. But he refused to cooperate and held to a prison-mentality honor code in which he would implicate nothing and take the punishment. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Ryan spent months trying to convince him to use an attorney before grudgingly finding him competent to defend himself. 'Well, I mean, this is not an A-plus passing on your competence by the experts,' he told Gunches. 'I hope you realize that.' Ryan told the Mirror that, through his refusal to prevent the jury from knowing anything about him, Gunches was leaving them no choice but to sentence him to death. One of his trial court judges, Joseph Kreamer, asked point-blank if he was trying to 'commit suicide by jury.' 'Do you believe in the death penalty?' That's the question Price's sister asked me. And when she didn't get a definitive enough 'yes,' she clammed up. Ironically, it's the same question Gunches asked of another reporter, and he wanted the same answer — agree to let me die— before he, too, stopped talking. The woman at the center of the killing nearly 23 years ago wouldn't talk at all. The long-ago relationships are ill-defined in the record: She was an ex-girlfriend of some kind to Ted Price and some kind of girlfriend to Gunches, the man who killed him. She wasn't charged in the murder, though she went to prison on drug charges that turned up during the investigation. When she had done her time, she moved away from Arizona, got married, changed her name, and started a new life. But do you ever escape this kind of trauma? When asked for comment, she had someone else return the call and demanded to be left out of the story, which is impossible. But now Gunches is dead, too, and whether his death at the hands of the state fulfilled any of their expectations remains to be seen. The answer is probably no. Aaron Gunches killed Ted Price on November 15, 2002, late at night in a river bottom east of Phoenix. Gunches was executed March 19, 2025, on a prison gurney in Florence. That's the beginning and end to the story. Here's the in-between, sketched out from court records and conversations with attorneys and a judge. Gunches came to the Phoenix area from Carlsbad, California, sometime in the 1990s. He had a high school diploma, he worked as a mechanic and in construction, and he had a talent for fabricating glass pipes for smoking methamphetamine. By 1999, he had already amassed three drug charges and a charge of misconduct with weapons, and he had done two-and-a-half years in prison, getting out in 2001 when he was 30. A year later, 2002, he was in a relationship of some sort with Kathryn Lecher. Gunches later denied to one of his attorneys that he and Lecher were a couple, though he sometimes spent the night. But with his prison honor code, and what an attorney called 'an exaggerated sense of chivalry,' he may have been covering up. Ted Price, 40, was an electronics technician, according to his obituary. He was originally from Utah but had moved to Massachusetts, where he left a divorce and two kids before moving back to Utah. Somewhere along the way, he and Lecher, herself divorced with two teenagers, had had a relationship that lasted about 10 years. In November 2002, Price took a bus from Utah to Mesa. He was studying to be an X-ray technician and waiting for a student grant so that he could get a place of his own in Arizona. But in the meantime, he was sleeping on a couch at Lecher's apartment. It was a crowded place. Lecher's two children lived with her, and so did a 17-year old named Jennifer Garcia, Garcia's father, and another woman. Everyone did drugs, including the kids, and according to court records Gunches and other men came and went. This didn't sit well with Price, who had hopes of getting back together with Lecher. She was not at all interested. Price, according to his sister, was alarmed at the drug use and said so. And on Nov. 14, 2002, after about five days, things exploded. Though the record does not detail what the argument was about, Lecher became so enraged that she threw a telephone — not a cell phone, mind you — and hit him full in the face, knocking him down. Price lay on the floor, dazed, unable to stand on his own two feet. Lecher made a phone call. Enter Gunches. According to statements from others in the house, Gunches was polite at first, and then lost his temper, grabbing Price by the hair and holding a gun to his head, saying, 'I should just take you out of this world right now.' One of the roommates called Greyhound to find out how much bus fare would cost to send Price back home. They gathered Price's things, though Gunches took Price's guitar, handed it to Lecher's son, and said, 'Compliments of Ted.' They half-carried Price to Lecher's car and loaded him onto the backseat. Gunches insisted that Jennifer Garcia drive, even though she had other plans. They drove to the bus terminal. Gunches went inside, telling Garcia to make sure Price didn't leave. He came out shortly, claiming he didn't have enough money for a ticket, and got back in the car. And though Garcia offered to chip in for bus fare, Gunches refused and ordered her to start driving up the Beeline Highway. They turned off the road toward Saguaro Lake, and when the car bottomed out at an area favored by dirt-bikers, Price and Gunches got out of the car. 'Where are we?' Price asked, and 'What are we doing?' 'We're going camping,' Gunches said. Gunches rooted in the trunk of the car while Price staggered about. He pulled out a gun, wrapped a towel around his hand and shot four times, hitting Price three times in the chest and once in the head. Price fell to his knees and then collapsed on his side. Though she initially testified that Gunches had made her fire the gun, too, Garcia never left the car. (The lie was encouraged by her father, who said she needed to embellish her story to make it more believable.) On the way back to Lecher's place, she said, Gunches tried to caress her hair. When they got there, Garcia left to walk around. When she got back, Gunches was asleep. She took the car keys and drove away. Price's body was not found for nearly a month, and it's debatable whether anyone was even looking. But hikers or bikers came across the body on Dec. 10, 2002. Maricopa County Sheriff's deputies combed the murder scene. There was no identification on the body, but Price was eventually identified by the serial number on a hip replacement. Gunches was long gone. On Jan. 15, 2003, two months after the murder, he was pulled over on I-10 near Yuma because of a burned-out taillight. He came out of the car shooting, striking the DPS officer in the chest, but not injuring him because he was wearing body armor. Gunches' shoulder was grazed, and he was shot in the head, though he later claimed he pulled the bullet out with his fingers. He fled the scene but was found the next day, hiding in a haystack in the town of Wenden, and arrested. He was put on a medical helicopter and rushed to a hospital. La Paz County prosecutors charged him with attempted murder, and he had already been convicted and sent to prison with a 23-year sentence before Maricopa County investigators connected him to the Price murder. He was indicted on murder and kidnapping charges in May 2004, one year and five months after he killed Ted Price. Garcia pleaded guilty to manslaughter and kidnapping in exchange for her testimony and was sentenced to 16 years in prison. Lecher was investigated, but not charged in the murder, and instead was convicted of child abuse for sharing drugs with her children, an allegation that arose during the investigation by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. Gunches' case went into suspended animation as court-appointed attorneys and psychologists tried to determine if he was competent to stand trial — and, after he insisted on firing his attorneys, whether he was competent to defend himself in court. Some of the evaluators found him incompetent, others said he was competent. Judge Timothy Ryan was increasingly frustrated with Gunches' refusal to defend himself at all. He pleaded guilty. He refused to sit for any more psych exams. Then he signed off without contesting the aggravating factors — that the murder was cruel and heinous and that he had been convicted of a prior serious offense, the cop shooting, which had actually taken place after — which are necessary to prove that the murder was among the worst of the worst. And he refused to present any mitigating evidence — family background, mental health issues — anything that could make a jury opt for life instead of death. Ryan was exasperated. 'You understand that, essentially, you are dictating that the jury impose the death penalty?' he said. The trial — what remained of it — began in late 2007, in the courtroom of Judge Rosa Mroz. There was little for the jury to consider. Gunches insisted on wearing his jail clothes instead of dressing out. Defendants usually do not appear in court in jail stripes or handcuffs, so as not to give the jury an impression of guilt. He called only one witness, Jennifer Garcia. 'I just got one question,' he said to her. 'How does it feel to get away with murder?' Whatever that meant, the question was never answered. And Garcia didn't get away with anything. She went to prison. On Feb. 14, 2008, the jury sentenced Gunches to death. All death sentences go directly to the Arizona Supreme Court, and that takes a while. On June 16, 2010, the state high court threw out Gunches' death sentence because of the prosecutor's allegation that the murder was cruel and heinous. The jury had passed on 'cruel,' but agreed on 'heinous.' But 'heinous' requires a finding that the murder was senseless — that the killer relished the crime, that there was gratuitous violence, that the victim feared for his life. The Supreme Court saw none of that. Writing for the majority, then-Chief Justice Scott Bales wrote, 'Even when viewed in the light most favorable to sustaining the verdict, the evidence suggests that Price's final shot (lapsing into case law) 'came in an attempt to kill the victim, not to engage in violence beyond that necessary to kill.'' Though the court held the other alleged aggravator to be valid, they thought the jury might have been unduly influenced by the 'heinousness' error. They threw out the death penalty and sent it back to Superior Court. Gunches' second trial didn't take place until 2013, and he was just as recalcitrant as before. He again insisted on defending himself, though it was more of a surrender. Marci Kratter was assigned as his advisory counsel. 'Gunches and I would get into fights every day of his trial,' she said. The judge repeated the question of whether he was committing suicide by jury. The state had a heyday. When the prosecutor would overstep his bounds and Kratter would object, Gunches would say, 'Judge, tell her to sit down and shut up.' Kratter described Gunches as 'obstinate, fact resistant and logic resistant.' She thought he was 'not right in the head.' But it pained her that there was no attempt to follow the legal process and that the jury was forced to reach a serious decision without being provided any information. 'How can you decide whether someone should live or die when the person puts on no evidence?' she asked. Needless to say, Gunches was sentenced to death again, and in 2016, it sailed through the Arizona Supreme Court. The opinion noted that his attorney didn't think he should defend himself, and that the trial court judge worried he was not attempting to avoid the death penalty. The justices knew that no mitigation had been presented and didn't care that the prior bad act had, in fact, occurred afterward. The verdict stuck. Things did not get better for Gunches' attorneys in the next appeals stage, called post-conviction relief, back in the trial court, where defendants can raise new issues for the first time. Gunches again convinced the court to let him defend himself, then promptly fired his lawyers and withdrew the appeal. He never filed another, though it would have been within his rights to do so. As one lawyer said, 'He has been the architect of his own disaster. Even if he's the biggest assh**e in the world, are we okay with this unexplored case resulting in death?' Gunches wasted no time in trying to get the sentence carried out. According to a handwritten brief he sent to the Arizona Supreme Court, he first wrote to then-Attorney General Mark Brnovich in 2018, shortly after his last appeal, asking to be executed. He asked five more times before Brnovich agreed. It was an inauspicious time for executions. The courts and the previous governor had paused executions pending litigation after a seriously botched one in 2014. And the drugs needed for further executions were unavailable until 2020, when U.S. Attorney General William Barr's administration decreed that the FDA had no control over execution drugs. A Connecticut company saw an open market and filled it. The U.S. government executed 13 people in 2020, in the last months of the first Trump administration. Similarly, Brnovich executed three Arizona prisoners in 2022, his last year in office. It was no coincidence that both men were running for office, and the death penalty is Republican doctrine for being tough on crime. Gunches hoped to piggy back on that killing spree. Almost as an afterthought, Brnovich sought a death warrant for Gunches, but he was out of office by the time of the execution date set by the court. Gov. Katie Hobbs and the newly elected AG, Kris Mayes, let the death warrant expire and declared a new moratorium on executions. But Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell intervened on behalf of Ted Price's family, and asked the Supreme Court if she could sidestep the AG's jurisdiction and request a new death warrant for Gunches herself. Gunches persisted. On Dec. 30, 2024, he filed a hand-written motion for his own death warrant, asking the Arizona Supreme Court and the state to stop 'foot dragging.' He asked to be executed on Valentine's Day, though it's uncertain who that romantic irony was supposed to gore, or if it was merely because the day was the anniversary of his first death sentence. Mitchell persisted, too, again asking the court to let her intervene in the name of justice. This time, the court said it would entertain the idea. And so, faced with litigation that could end by badly blurring lines between jurisdictions, Hobbs and Mayes folded. Mayes requested a death warrant. On Feb. 11, despite friend-of-the-court briefs hoping to stop the execution, despite the fact that there were no new evaluations conducted on Gunches to ensure he is mentally competent, as is customary when Death Row prisoners volunteer for execution, The Arizona Supreme Court issued the warrant. Gunches was to be executed on March 19, 2025. The day came soon enough. Executions are awkward, surreal rituals, and this one seemed equal parts prison opera and sci-fi fantasy. The witnesses had been chosen, vetted, warned and wanded: Six reporters, a county attorney, a defense attorney, a victim's rights attorney, an attorney general. There was Price's sister and her escort from the Department of Corrections, and a couple no one could identify. We were seated on padded benches in a 10-by-20-foot room with white stucco walls. At the back of the room, closed venetian blinds hid the state's gas chamber, which hasn't been used since 1999. At precisely 10 a.m., two TV monitors lit up, and on screen Gunches was led in, wearing what looked like a giant white onesie. He was laid on the gurney. The cameras now looked on from above. Three sets of arms in black sleeves and black gloves quickly strapped Gunches to the table and then covered him up to his chest with a white sheet, tucking him in as if he were a child preparing for bedtime. Then the black curtain opened, and there he was Aaron Gunches, looking straight up at the ceiling. It was hard to tell if his eyes were closed or just squinting. He never once looked into the witness room to see who was there. Now the medical team was fussing about him — four men dressed in white gowns, their identities hidden by white hoodies and white face masks, wiping his arms with cotton, setting catheters into the inside hollows of his elbows and pasting heart monitors on his chest. The anonymous voice read the death warrant, fast as an auctioneer, and then asked, 'Mr. Gunches, do you have any last words?' None. He blinked. He grimaced. He flicked his tongue to wet his lips. He coughed. The announcer said the execution had begun. Gunches huffed and snored. Then he went motionless. We waited. Five minutes. Ten. Seventeen. To those of us in the room, it only seemed an eternity. For Gunches it truly was. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Arizona executes Aaron Gunches, first execution in a Dem-run state since 2017
An Arizona man has been executed following his first-degree murder conviction in 2008. Aaron Gunches, 53, was pronounced dead following the administration of lethal injection at 10:33 a.m. MST Wednesday at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence. Gunches pleaded guilty to fatally shooting Ted Price, his girlfriend's ex-husband, in the desert outside the Phoenix suburb of Mesa in 2002. "The process went according to plan, without any incident at all," Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (ADCRR) Deputy Director John Barcello said in a post-execution media conference. Barcello said Gunches did not put up "any sort of resistance." When the death row inmate was asked if he had any last words, Barcello said Gunches shook his head, "no." Arizona Death Row Inmate Wants To Be Executed Earlier Than The State Is Planning Gunches' final meal included a double western bacon cheeseburger with fries, a spicy gyro, a barbecue gyro, onion rings and baklava, Barcello said. He did not elect to have a spiritual advisor present with him during the execution process. Read On The Fox News App Gunches appealed his death sentencing in 2016, according to the ADCRR, but "the Supreme Court of the State of Arizona affirmed the conviction," a statement said. Killer Lori Vallow, 'Doomsday Mom,' Says Jesus Spoke To Her In Spiritual Vision, Showed Her Prison Release Gunches' execution is the first in the state in more than two years. He is the first person executed in a state with a Democrat serving as governor since Virginia did so in 2017, when Terry McAuliffe was in charge, according to The Associated Press. 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 Department is confident in both the quality and quantity of its pentobarbital supply," ADCRR said in a statement. "Appropriate testing occurred earlier this year, including a quantitative chemical analysis, which has been provided to Mr. Gunches, confirming a sufficient concentration of pentobarbital in the compounded solution. Additionally, sterility testing on the compounded pentobarbital was completed earlier this year, providing verification of the drug's beyond use date. The results of this testing have also been provided to Mr. Gunches," the statement said. Gunches is the second of four death row prisoners in the United States executed this week. Louisiana executed a man on Tuesday and two more executions are scheduled in Florida and Oklahoma on Thursday. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Original article source: Arizona executes Aaron Gunches, first execution in a Dem-run state since 2017
