Arizona executes condemned prison who volunteered to be executed

 The 8th Execution of 2025

Aaron Gunches, who has advocated for his death, was executed shortly after 10 a.m. March 19, 2025 at a prison facility in Florence, reported The Arizona Republic.

On Dec. 30, 2024, Gunches 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.

He was the first person killed by the state of Arizona since 2022 and the fourth since 2014. In 2022, three men were executed, and the state struggled to administer all three lethal injections. In 2014, it took two hours for the lethal injection drugs to kill Joseph Wood, leading to an eight-year pause in executions.

Upon taking office in 2023, Gov. Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes, both Democrats, suspended executions pending a review of the state's capital punishment system by an independent commissioner.

At the time, 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 Hobbs ended the review before it was finished, saying she had lost confidence in the effort.

Maricopa County Attorney Rachel 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 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.

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.

Dale Baich watched the execution of Aaron Gunches as his invited legal witness. He said appearances could be misleading, because of how the lethal drugs affect a human body.

“The witnesses did not see is what happened under the jumpsuit and sheet. We know from scientific studies 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," Baich told reporters afterward.

"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 added.

Baich said the breaths, the heaving chest and gurgling sounds were all signs we was struggling to breathe, and noted, "Even though it may have looked peaceful, it was not.” 

Ted Price's sister, Karen Price, told the media after watching the execution of her brother's killer: “The pain of losing Ted remains profound and cannot be conveyed in mere words."

She fondly remembered him as an avid fan of the Suns and Diamondbacks, and a compassionate man who loved cats. He'd be 63 years old if he'd lived, she said, recalling an idyllic childhood in Utah. She is 15 months younger than her brother, with whom she was very close.

The last time Karen Price saw her brother alive was when she dropped him off at the Salt Lake City airport in February 2002, when she snapped a photo of him. His body was found in the desert 23 days after he went to Arizona, she said.

She struggled for words to convey what the execution of Aaron Gunches means to her and said that she was relieved the process was finally over.

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