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Arizona Likely to Restart Executions in 2025 After Two-Year Pause

After working with prison officials to review and improve procedures, Arizona’s top prosecutor announced that executions there could resume in early 2025 following a two-year pause, the AP reports. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a statement sent to The Associated Press on Wednesday that she will soon seek an execution warrant for Aaron Brian Gunches, who is on death row after being convicted of killing his girlfriend’s ex-husband. Gunches had been set to be put to death in April 2023. But the state lacked staff with expertise to carry out executions, could not find an IV team to carry out the lethal injection, and didn’t have a contract with a pharmacist to compound the pentobarbital needed for an execution.


Gov. Katie Hobbs had promised not to carry out any executions until there was confidence the state can do so without violating any laws, and in a way that is “transparent and humane.” The attorney general’s office had said it would not seek a court order to carry out the death penalty while a review was underway.  But the review Hobbs had ordered effectively ended this month when she dismissed the retired federal magistrate she had appointed earlier to head the review. Corrections officials “conducted a thorough review of policies and procedures and made critical improvements to help ensure executions carried out by the State meet legal and constitutional standards,” said the governor’s spokesman, Christian Slater.  Arizona last carried out three executions in 2022 following a nearly eight-year hiatus brought on by criticism that a 2014 execution was botched and because of difficulties obtaining drugs for execution.

 

 

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A daily report co-sponsored by Arizona State University, Criminal Justice Journalists, and the National Criminal Justice Association

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