Arizona set to execute a prisoner for the killing of a man set on fire in 2002 attack

PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona prisoner convicted of killing another man by throwing gasoline at him and lighting a match is set to be put to death Wednesday, the first of three executions planned this week around the U.S.

Leroy Dean McGill, 63, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection of pentobarbital at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence. He was convicted of murder in the July 2002 death of Charles Perez.

Authorities said McGill threw the gasoline and a lit match at Perez and Perez’s girlfriend, Nova Banta, as they sat on a sofa in a north Phoenix apartment on July 13 of that year. Perez and Banta had accused McGill of stealing a gun from the apartment before the attack. At the time, McGill was using methamphetamine and hadn’t slept in several days.

Banta survived the attack, but Perez died.

Twelve people have been executed so far this year in the United States. Tennessee and Florida each are scheduled to carry out an execution Thursday.

At the Arizona trial, Banta testified that McGill told her and Perez not to talk behind people’s backs. Before they could respond, McGill lit them on fire, authorities said.

Perez and Banta ran out of the apartment. Another man who lived in the apartment used a blanket to put out the flames on Banta, who suffered third-degree burns over three-quarters of her body. Perez died later at a hospital after suffering what prosecutors described as extreme pain.

Banta identified McGill as the attacker at trial.

Jurors deliberated for less than an hour before convicting McGill of murder in Perez’s death in October 2004. He also was convicted of attempted murder for attacking Banta, arson and endangerment of people who escaped without injuries when the fire forced them to flee the apartment and a nearby unit where flames spread.

McGill’s lawyers had argued for leniency by presenting evidence about abuse he suffered as a child as well as mental impairment and psychological immaturity. The jury ultimately returned the death sentence.

This spring, McGill’s lawyers made a last-ditch bid to get him resentenced, but a lower-court judge rejected it. The Arizona Supreme Court also declined a request from McGill’s lawyers to postpone the execution.

McGill, who declined an interview request from The Associated Press, waived his right to seek clemency.

Arizona last applied the death penalty in 2025, executing Richard Kenneth Djerf for the 1993 killings of four members of a Phoenix family and Aaron Gunches for the 2002 fatal shooting of his girlfriend’s ex-husband.

The state carried out three executions in 2022 following a nearly eight-year hiatus brought on by difficulties obtaining execution drugs and by criticism that a 2014 execution was botched. In that execution, Joseph Wood was injected with 15 doses of a two-drug combination over two hours, leading him to snort repeatedly and gasp hundreds of times before he died.

The state’s execution protocol calls for administering two syringes of the sedative pentobarbital, according to the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry.

Arizona currently has 109 prisoners on death row.

Source: The Associated Press, Staff, May 19, 2026

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde

Death Penalty News For a World without the Death Penalty

Comments

US | Army lays groundwork for death row executions if Trump gives approval

The Army is preparing to carry out the executions of the military's four death-row inmates if ordered to do so by the president, according to an internal planning document reviewed by ABC News. If carried out, it would mark the first time the military executed convicted American inmates in more than a half-century The plan, dubbed "Operation Resolute Justice" and issued internally in February, directs Army officials to coordinate with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to transfer condemned prisoners from the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to the federal execution facility in Terre Haute, Indiana, where the Justice Department carried out a series of non-military federal executions during President Donald Trump's first term.

Oklahoma | Richard Glossip on Life After Decades on Death Row

In an exclusive interview at home in Oklahoma City, Glossip describes his first days of freedom in a world he hasn’t experienced for nearly 30 years. For three decades, Richard Glossip lived on concrete. First at the Oklahoma County jail, after his arrest for murder in 1997, and then in the underground bunker housing death row inmates at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. As with the rest of his surroundings, he eventually got used to the hard, unforgiving floors, although recently he’d developed painful swelling in his legs.

Alabama Plans to Execute Jeffrey Lee Despite Jury Vote for Life

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has scheduled the execution of Jeffrey Lee by nitrogen suffocation for June 11, 2026, even though his capital jury voted 7-5 against the death penalty and chose a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. The trial judge overrode the jury’s verdict and sentenced Mr. Lee to death in 2000, relying on a unique Alabama practice that allowed judges to overrule jury verdicts in death penalty cases. Alabama is the only state where judges overrode jury verdicts of life to impose the death penalty routinely—in more than 100 cases since 1976. As a result, nearly 20% of the people currently on Alabama’s death row were sentenced to death by elected judges even after their juries chose life imprisonment without parole.

20 Minutes to Death: Witness to the Last Execution in France

The following document is a firsthand account of the final moments of Hamida Djandoubi, a convicted murderer executed by guillotine at Marseille’s Baumettes Prison on September 10, 1977. The record—dated September 9—was written by Monique Mabelly, a judge appointed by the state to witness the proceedings. Djandoubi’s execution would ultimately be the last carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. At the time, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing—who had publicly voiced his "deep aversion to the death penalty" prior to his election—rejected Djandoubi’s appeal for clemency. Choosing to let "justice take its course," the President allowed the execution to proceed, just as he had in two previous cases during his term: Christian Ranucci , executed on July 28, 1976 and Jérôme Carrein , executed on June 23, 1977. Hamida Djandoubi , a Tunisian national, was sentenced to death for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet. He was execu...

New Mississippi billboard warns criminals: ‘Firing squad is legal’

DESOTO COUNTY, Miss. (WREG) — A billboard standing on Interstate 55 southbound as you cross the Tennessee state line and enter Mississippi from Memphis is sending a grim message to those coming into the state. DeSoto County District Attorney Matthew Barton recently announced the new billboard campaign, which features the sign reading, “WELCOME TO MISSISSIPPI. WHERE THE FIRING SQUAD IS LEGAL. THINK TWICE.” It references Mississippi’s law permitting execution by firing squad under certain circumstances for inmates sentenced to death. Barton says this campaign is aimed at deterring violent crime and sends a direct message to criminals entering Mississippi.

Florida executes Andrew Richard Lukehart

Jacksonville man who killed his girlfriend’s 5-month-old baby in 1996 executed 30 years later A Jacksonville man who confessed to killing his girlfriend’s 5-month-old daughter and throwing her body in a pond 3 decades ago was executed on Tuesday evening. Andrew Richard Lukehart, 53, was scheduled to receive a 3-drug injection starting at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was sentenced to death after being convicted of aggravated child abuse and felony murder in the death of Gabrielle Hanshaw. The baby’s mother told News4JAX she plans to attend the execution.

Texas | Tanner Horner now incarcerated at the Polunsky Unit

Convicted child killer Tanner Horner has now taken up residence in one of the most brutal death row prisons after being sentenced to die by a Texas jury last month. Horner is incarcerated at the Polunsky Unit, an infamously restrictive prison outside Houston where the state's death row inmates are housed in an all-solitary confinement wing and spend at least 22 hours a day in their 60-square-foot cells. The former FedEx deliveryman, 34, was booked at the notorious prison on May 5 within hours of being sentenced for the gruesome murder of Athena Strand, 7, whom he admitted strangling while delivering a Christmas gift to her home in November 2022.

Can the state execute a man who already survived? | Opinion

A second execution would be an unimaginable nightmare for Tony Carruthers and a moral horror for the rest of us. Tony Carruthers is not supposed to be alive . On May 21, Tennessee set out to execute him. It failed. Carruthers survived. He is not the first person to survive an execution in the United States, and he won’t be the last. For Carruthers, the question is: Now what? Will the state seek to arrange a second execution?

Florida | 2-time Jacksonville baby abuser is set for execution

Thirty years ago while on probation for fracturing an infant’s skull, Andrew Lukehart inflicted at least five blows to the head of another baby, then concocted a story that she was abducted before eventually leading authorities to her body in a swamp area. At 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 2, the 53-year-old from Jacksonville is set to become Florida’s eighth man on death row to be executed in 2026. He will become the 36th under Gov. Ron DeSantis after a record 19 inmates were executed by the state in 2025, including another from Duval County: Michael Bell.

Iran executes Esma Zarei in Ardabil Prison after she gave birth in custody

Hengaw – Saturday, May 23, 2026. Iranian authorities have executed Esma Zarei, a 28-year-old Turkish woman from Parsabad in Ardabil Province, who had previously been sentenced to death on charges of “premeditated murder” in connection with the killing of her husband. She is the sixth woman executed in Iran since the beginning of 2026. According to information received by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Zarei was executed at dawn on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, in Ardabil Central Prison. She had been sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) after being convicted of her husband’s murder.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog