Topics: Crime
A killer who has been incarcerated for more than two decades has waived his right to appeal his execution.
Aaron Gunches, of Arizona, pleaded guilty in 2004 of the kidnapping and murder of Ted Price, in 2002, but it wasn't until 2008 that he was given the death penalty for his crimes.
The 53-year-old has opted to defend himself in court ever since, and has waived his right to an appeal, as well as any legal rights at virtually every stage of proceedings.
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On 25 November, 2022, Gunches filed a request to the state supreme court to be executed as soon as possible, before retracting his request.
Now, having submitted a handwritten motion on December 30 asking for the State of Arizona to 'have his long overdue sentence carried out', he has been given an execution date of Wednesday (March 19).
The killing of Price is understood to have taken place after Gunches arrived at his girlfriend's home in Mesa, Arizona.
When he got there, he discovered that earlier on in the day she had been involved in an altercation with Price, her ex-husband, and had hit him in the face with a telephone.
It is believed that Gunches, along with his girlfriend and her roommates, then loaded Price him into his car with the intention that he was to be dropped off at a bus station.
However, it is claimed that Gunches couldn't afford to buy a bus ticket for him so instead drove him into the desert where he executed him as he was exiting his car - shooting him four times.
That was on November 14. Two months later - on January 15, 2003 - a police officer pulled him over during a routine traffic stop, and Gunches then fired shots at the cop.
The officer was hit twice but managed to survive the ordeal. Meanwhile, Gunches was arrested the following day after a huge manhunt was launched.
He was found hiding out in a haystack.
The reason that Gunches withdrew his request to be executed sooner in 2022, was because he claimed that there were 'three recent botched executions of Dixon, Atwood and Hooper'.
His letter, which was submitted on January 4, 2023, read in part: "The ADC [Arizona Department of Corrections] staff on the execution team are not medical professionals, nor are they certified for IV insertion, nor are they capable of performing surgery. Plain and simple: This was torture."
In the letter, Gunches also refers to a comment made by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes in October 2022: "We need to take some time to assess how the death penalty has worked, and make sure that this is done legally and correctly."
The motion, that he wrote himself, continued: "Aaron Gunches does not want to be tortured before he is executed and asks this court to withdraw his motion with leave to file at a later date, after AG Mayes insures executions can be done in a proper manner.
"For the Arizona Supreme Court to issue an execution warrant under the current conditions amounts to court ordered cruel and unusual punishment, which simply cannot be allowed."
