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What the future of capital punishment in Arizona could look like

injection table
Arizona Department of Corrections
Arizona began executing death-row inmates by lethal injection in 1993.

Arizona death row inmate Aaron Gunches has asked to be executed next month. This comes as Gov. Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes have said they’re prepared to restart using lethal injection, after pausing capital punishment when they took office two years ago, pending a review of the practice.

But as Michael Kiefer, a longtime reporter in Arizona and a current contributor to the Arizona Mirror, explains, there are still questions about the manner in which the state puts people to death. Kiefer has been writing about this and joined The Show to discuss, starting with this supply the state has of one of the ingredients needed to make pentobarbital, which is the drug used in lethal injections, but it sounds like it’s not being stored in a way people might think it would be.

Michael Kiefer in KJZZ's studio in January 2025.
Amber Victoria Singer/KJZZ
Michael Kiefer in KJZZ's studio in January 2025.

Full conversation

MICHAEL KIEFER: Last week I sat down with David Duncan, he’s the retired magistrate judge, federal magistrate judge, that Governor Katie Hobbs had contracted with to do an evaluation of the state's lethal injection protocol. And over the course of that discussion, he described to me, you know, among the things he had learned that here with these, these crystals, this material, it's called an API, for active pharmaceutical ingredient, for Pentobarbital salt, that had that was stored in a refrigerator in a facility, in Florence, run by, you know, the Arizona Department of Corrections.

And he was a bit taken aback. Here were these jars, they looked like mason jars. Here was this powder, no labels on the jars, and he wondered, “what kind of doctor would take a material from an unmarked jar and inject it into a body?” And that started him thinking about it and it started him asking questions about, you know, whether the chemical was still viable.

Now, these drugs are, are, are otherwise unavailable. So, what happened was, there was a company in Connecticut, and this is information that I only got on the record last week, called Absolute Standards in Connecticut that saw a hole in the market and started to manufacture this API, active pharmaceutical ingredient, to satisfy these needs.

Now, one of the things that I also learned last week from a federal defender in Tennessee, who had gone to this company in order to find out how to obtain it for executions in her state, and they told her that it had a shelf life of two and a half years. Judge Duncan was told by the state of Arizona that it had a permanent shelf life, that it was going to be fine, and, and he was doubtful about that.

So this raises the question, as to A, will it work? The other question is perhaps more serious. What has been emerging over the last several years was that pentobarbital has this other effect that wasn't foreseen, which is that it triggers what they call a flash edema.

It is so caustic that immediately, the tissues in the lungs start to collapse, fluid rushes in, fills the lungs, and basically the person drowns in his or her own body fluids. There are anesthesiologists who have compared this to the torture waterboarding. So, when we see this person who is unresponsive, and unresponsive doesn't mean you can't feel pain, it means you can't move, it means you can't react. They may in fact and most likely are suffering this very painful drowning-like death.

BRODIE: Let me ask you about the issue of whether or not the ingredient is still viable, if it's expired or not. What are the implications of that, especially if A, people don't really know if it's expired or not, or B, if it actually is expired and the people conducting the executions are still using it?

KIEFER: Well, we don't really know the state, even, you know, today I got,, the, the Arizona attorney General's office referred me back to a letter that corrections director Ryan Thornell had sent to Governor Hobbs back in November, saying “don't worry, we've tested these drugs, supposedly they they're going to be tested by the Department of Public Safety labs and gave assurances.” So, you know, who, who knows? I mean, they are firm that the drug is fine, at least from what they're telling me. So, that's the one question. They are confident that the drug is still viable.

The other question remains. Now, just just a few days ago, outgoing Attorney General Merrick Garland issued an order saying that the federal government, that the Department of Justice, will no longer use pentobarbital, for these reasons. Of course, he's on his way out. Just on January 20, one of the many executive orders issued by incoming President Trump was that, “yes, we're gonna go forward with executions. It's a great deterrent,” which is debatable, and among the other things he said is that he's going to promise every state that has capital punishment that they will have a sufficient supply of the drugs needed to do it. Now, where those drugs come from is anyone's guess.

BRODIE: At the same time, there are states that are looking to move away from lethal injection as their method of execution, right? I mean, you referenced Judge Duncan, he in his report, suggested that maybe a firing squad would be a better, more humane option here.

KIEFER: Well, what Judge Duncan actually says as he explained it to me is that the possibility of screwing it up is less with the firing squad. I, I don't, you know, he, he brought along a caveat that, “look, you're ending someone's life, it's violent. You're taking, you're taking a life away from someone who doesn't want to die.” So, there are other states that have that that are trying asphyxiation by nitrogen. The problem with that is that when you're executing someone, they aren't volunteering to die.

BRODIE: Usually. I mean, Aaron Gunches is being, potentially, the exception to that rule, right?

KIEFER: Yes, that's another question, you know, I mean that I find very interesting with the case of Aaron Gunches and I've covered some of his appeals in the past. Aaron Gunches killed a man in 2002, I believe, and he went on the lam and then he was pulled over by a cop. He got in a gun fight with a cop, he shot the cop. He went to trial, and he refused to put up any defense. So, here's a man who's been incarcerated for 20 some years who was resigned to the fact that he killed someone, and, “do with me what you may.”

And, and I think it's also a statement of how,, you know, this notion of the death penalty is the deterrence. It's for, for some, it's, it's a harsher punishment to be spending the rest of your life locked up.

BRODIE: So, what are state officials, and maybe what does Judge Duncan say, about what all of what he found and what we've been talking about? What does it all mean for the future of capital punishment in Arizona?

KIEFER: Well, You know, there's this unwillingness to listen and as I, as I've said many times, the less you know about the death penalty, the stronger are your beliefs for or against. You know, when you actually start to learn about it, it's a very gray area, it's complex and you come up with these sort of paradoxical questions.

KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ's programming is the audio record.

Mark Brodie is a co-host of The Show, KJZZ’s locally produced news magazine. Since starting at KJZZ in 2002, Brodie has been a host, reporter and producer, including several years covering the Arizona Legislature, based at the Capitol.
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