Aaron Gunches Asks for February Execution Date, Raising New Concerns About Arizona’s Lethal Injection Protocol and the Execution of ​“Volunteers”

No jury has ever learned about Aaron Gunches’ life his­to­ry and expe­ri­ences, noth­ing about his child­hood, men­tal and phys­i­cal health, or trau­ma — the mit­i­ga­tion evi­dence that the Supreme Court has said is essen­tial to a con­sti­tu­tion­al death sen­tence. Arizona courts judged Mr. Gunches com­pe­tent to rep­re­sent him­self in two sep­a­rate tri­als for the mur­der of his ex-girlfriend’s hus­band, and he pre­sent­ed no defense in either pro­ceed­ing. Jurors twice sen­tenced him to death. On December 30, Mr. Gunches sub­mit­ted a hand­writ­ten motion ask­ing for a February exe­cu­tion date to ​“have his Long Overdue Sentence car­ried out.” If his request is grant­ed, he will become the 167^th per­son to suc­cess­ful­ly ​“vol­un­teer” for exe­cu­tion in the mod­ern era despite seri­ous con­cerns about men­tal health, com­pe­ten­cy, and due process in near­ly every case. His request has also prompt­ed new ques­tions regard­ing Arizona’s trou­bling his­to­ry of botched exe­cu­tions and the pos­si­ble ​“excru­ci­at­ing” effects of using the lethal injec­tion drug pentobarbital.

Mr. Gunches has con­sis­tent­ly pur­sued his own exe­cu­tion. Even though he was deemed com­pe­tent to stand tri­al and rep­re­sent him­self, court records show that the tri­al judge ​“expressed…concern that Gunches was not attempt­ing to avoid the death penal­ty.” Mr. Gunches sought to waive appeals and legal rights at vir­tu­al­ly every stage of pro­ceed­ings. In 2022, he asked the Arizona Supreme Court to issue his death war­rant, but Gov. Katie Hobbs said at the time that the state was not pre­pared to con­duct an exe­cu­tion due to insuf­fi­cient staff train­ing. Gov. Hobbs paused exe­cu­tions and ordered a review of the state’s pro­to­col after cor­rec­tions offi­cers strug­gled to set IV lines in all three exe­cu­tions in 2022. Mr. Gunches sub­se­quent­ly with­drew his request for an exe­cu­tion date, say­ing the state’s recent exe­cu­tions were ​“car­ried out in a man­ner that amounts to tor­ture,” and asked to be trans­ferred to Texas and exe­cut­ed there. That unprece­dent­ed request was denied. 

In November 2024, Gov. Hobbs abrupt­ly dis­missed Magistrate Judge David Duncan, who was charged with con­duct­ing the inde­pen­dent review of Arizona’s death penal­ty, after he con­clud­ed in a draft report that lethal injec­tion was ​“fun­da­men­tal­ly unre­li­able, unwork­able, and unac­cept­ably prone to errors.” He found gross incom­pe­tence by prison staff, cit­ing an exam­ple of exe­cu­tion team mem­bers research­ing drug dosages on Wikipedia the night before an exe­cu­tion, as well as secret $20,000 cash pay­ments to prison offi­cials respon­si­ble for the botched exe­cu­tions in 2022. Judge Duncan has protest­ed that he was dis­missed for ask­ing for tax records for those pay­ments. Despite not hav­ing any final inde­pen­dent report, the state announced that exe­cu­tions would resume, and Mr. Gunches’ new request for an exe­cu­tion date fol­lowed a few weeks lat­er. An ami­cus brief filed by law pro­fes­sor Corinna Barrett Lain on January 6 argues that the con­sti­tu­tion­al risk of a pen­to­bar­bi­tal lethal injec­tion tor­tur­ing Mr. Gunches to death must super­sede his efforts to seek his own execution. 

A recent DPI analy­sis found that of the 166 indi­vid­u­als who have vol­un­teered for exe­cu­tion in the past half-cen­tu­ry, 87% strug­gled with men­tal ill­ness, sub­stance abuse, or both. Over 10% of exe­cu­tions in this time­frame have been of vol­un­teers, includ­ing 12.5% (five of 40) in Arizona. There is also a demo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ty that has puz­zled researchers: white men like Mr. Gunches rep­re­sent 46% of death row but 84% of volunteers. 

Courts require only a min­i­mal find­ing of legal ​“com­pe­tence” to waive appeals in cap­i­tal cas­es, mean­ing that a death-sen­tenced prisoner’s request to be put to death may over­ride any mer­i­to­ri­ous con­sti­tu­tion­al claims that make him inel­i­gi­ble for exe­cu­tion. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall harsh­ly crit­i­cized this stan­dard and argued that the cur­rent process amounts to ​“noth­ing less than state-admin­is­tered sui­cide.” Indeed, DPI’s analy­sis showed that the ​“vol­un­teer rate” for exe­cu­tion is near­ly iden­ti­cal to the sui­cide rate on death row — and about ten times high­er than the sui­cide rate among the general public. 

Many vol­un­teers open­ly express their wish to die or exhib­it pro­found symp­toms of men­tal ill­ness. On September 24, 2024, Travis Mullis was exe­cut­ed in Texas; in his final state­ment, he explained that he had waived appeals because he sought ​“assist­ed sui­cide.” On December 18, 2024, Joseph Corcoran became the first per­son exe­cut­ed in Indiana in 15 years after courts approved his request for an exe­cu­tion date, despite decades of evi­dence that he suf­fered from para­noid schiz­o­phre­nia. He believed that prison guards were tor­tur­ing him with an ultra­sound machine. Yet no court con­duct­ed an exe­cu­tion com­pe­ten­cy hear­ing because Mr. Corcoran did not autho­rize his defense attor­neys’ efforts to request one. 

In her ami­cus brief, Professor Lain argues that Mr. Gunches’ choice to vol­un­teer does not negate the severe con­sti­tu­tion­al con­cerns about his exe­cu­tion. She high­light­ed evi­dence that pen­to­bar­bi­tal floods the lungs, drown­ing the pris­on­er and caus­ing ​“pan­ic and ter­ror.” A 2019 review of 27 autop­sies fol­low­ing pen­to­bar­bi­tal exe­cu­tions, includ­ing eight in Arizona, showed that the lungs of the exe­cut­ed pris­on­ers were two to three times heav­ier than nor­mal. A ​“pletho­ra of cir­cum­stances” demon­strates Arizona’s ​“inabil­i­ty to law­ful­ly car­ry out an exe­cu­tion,” Professor Lain wrote. ​“Mr. Gunches’ appar­ent will­ing­ness to be exe­cut­ed does not change these facts. Nor does it lessen the irrev­o­ca­ble harm that fol­lows when the state takes life in its cit­i­zens’ name in a man­ner that does not com­port with the fun­da­men­tal con­di­tions that have been placed on its ulti­mate exer­cise of power.”