With Leroy McGill having been put to death on the morning of May 20, Arizona officials will look to execute the next of the 108 inmates who are on death row.
Of those, 22 have exhausted their appeals process and could have the Arizona Supreme Court issue an execution warrant after a request from the Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, according to Mayes spokesperson Richie Taylor.
There's no set order in which death row inmates are executed. Rather, it is at Mayes' discretion, according to Taylor. He declined to comment on whether Mayes had someone in mind for Arizona's next execution or when she planned to file a motion with the Arizona Supreme Court.
McGill
While Taylor didn't say if Arizona would execute another inmate in 2026, doing so would match the number of people executed in 2025 under the administrations of Mayes and Gov. Katie Hobbs, both Democrats. Aaron Gunches and Richard Djerf were put to death in March and October 2025, respectively.
People are also reading…
On taking office in 2023, Gov. Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes paused executions pending a review of the state's capital punishment system by an independent commissioner.
Hobbs cut short the review, which was conducted by retired U.S. Magistrate Judge David Duncan, saying she had lost confidence in the effort. In a draft of his report, Duncan said lethal injections were, in practice, "fundamentally unreliable, unworkable and unacceptably prone to errors."
Hobbs said the state was ready to begin putting prisoners to death again after the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry sent her an "execution preparedness" review in November 2024.
Mayes and Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell previously disputed who had the authority to request execution warrants, with Mitchell being critical of Mayes' death penalty pause. That led to Mitchell asking the Supreme Court for a death warrant for Gunches — a process normally handled by the attorney general.
It remained unclear whether Mitchell had the authority to request a death warrant, but Mitchell eventually agreed to drop the dispute when Mayes requested a death warrant for Gunches.
Who is eligible to be put to death in Arizona?
The three people executed under Hobbs and Mayes all had death penalty cases based in Maricopa County. Of the 22 people who've exhausted their appeals, 13 have cases in Maricopa County.
The 22 cases involve first-degree murders that occurred between 1981 and 2008. But with Gunches, Djerf and McGill having been put to death for crimes they committed in 2002, 1993 and 2002, respectively, it doesn't appear Mayes is more likely to choose an inmate based on the case's age.
Should she select one of the 16 cases in which the murder occurred before Nov. 23, 1992, the chosen inmate will have the option to choose between death by lethal injection or gas chamber.
All state executions are carried out at the Corrections Department's prison complex in Florence.
