PHOENIX — A judge said Thursday afternoon he was helpless to provide any immediate relief to the family of a murder victim who wanted the state to go ahead with the scheduled execution that day of his killer because a death warrant issued by the Arizona Supreme Court was expiring.
That leaves Aaron Gunches, who had sought his own execution, and the sister and daughter of murder victim Ted Price, who also wanted it carried out, with no way to get the relief they sought, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Frank Moskowitz said during the court hearing.
Moskowitz said that with the Supreme Court declining late Wednesday to extend the warrant set to expire at 12:01 a.m. Friday, he had nothing to order the state to do.
“I have an expiring order,’’ Moskowitz said to the Price family’s lawyers during the hearing. “If it expires (the law) provides the Supreme Court shall issue a warrant of execution, not this court.’’
Gunches, who asked late last year to have his sentence carried out for the 2002 murder of Price, sounded frustrated.
“This all goes back to me filing my own death warrant because I want my sentence carried out,’’ Gunches told the court by phone from the prison in Florence where he remains on Death Row.
“But the attorney general said that wasn’t happening,’’ he said. “I want whatever gets my sentence carried out, as fast as possible.’’
The planned execution was never really on track after new Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, asked on Jan. 20 that the high court not issue the death warrant that former Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich had sought.
New, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs announced that same day that she was initiating a top-to-bottom review of how the death penalty is carried out in the state. She said Arizona would conduct no executions in the meantime.
That set off a series of court battles, with the Supreme Court eventually ruling there was no reason not to issue the warrant.
But Hobbs and Mayes declined to move ahead. And the justices refused to order Hobbs to do so, saying a warrant permits — but does not require — the governor to execute a prisoner.
The family and Republican Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell then filed a separate suit in Superior Court, saying that delaying the execution violates the victim’s bill of rights in the state constitution.
That was the case before Moskowitz on Thursday.
He had ordered lawyers for Hobbs and the state corrections department to appear to answer the suit filed by Karen Price, Ted Price’s sister, and Brittney Kay, his daughter. But the judge’s ability to move the case forward was sidetracked when the high court refused to issue the warrant extension.
With both women listening to the court hearing, Hobbs’ lawyer said the governor understands their feelings.
‘We see them, we feel for them and we feel for every Arizona who’s a victim of a crime,’’ attorney Bo Dul told the women.
But she went on to say that when it comes to the most dramatic and irreversible of the state powers, implementing a death sentence, it is the duty of the governor and the corrections department to ensure it is carried out ‘lawfully, effectively and as humanely as possible.’’
Hobbs and Mayes had pointed to Arizona’s history of problematic executions and its struggles to legally obtain drugs to put people to death when they halted executions and ordered the review.
The state had resumed executions just last year after an eight-year pause following the botched execution of Joseph Wood. Wood took more than two hours to die after receiving 15 doses of drugs.
Despite Moskowitz saying he saw no way to order the state to carry out Thursday’s execution, and little legal chance for the attorneys for Kay and Price to prevail, he did not immediately dismiss their case.
Instead, he is giving them time to reframe their legal arguments in a way that might give them a chance to bring their constitutional claims. But he said at this point, there was little he could do.
“I’m just telling you, I’m just skeptical of where all of this is going,’’ Moskowitz said.
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