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.
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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.
