On Nov. 27, Arizona’s Democratic attorney general announced her intention to seek a death warrant in the case of Aaron Gunches and to restart executions after a two-year hiatus. "My office has been preparing since earlier this year to resume executions in Arizona," Kris Mayes said. "Back in May, I indicated that executions would resume by early 2025."

The attorney general’s plan is a mistake and a politically motivated calculation in a closely divided state where Democrats must be careful not to offend Republican and independent votes. But the fact of the matter remains: Arizona’s death penalty is no more reliable or fair now than it was in 2022.

And what is true in Arizona is true everywhere the death penalty exists in this country.

Before looking more closely at Arizona’s death penalty mistake, we should recall that the state has a long death penalty history, marked by frequent starts and stops dating all the way back to the period before it was admitted to the Union.

In 1910, Arizona began carrying out executions at the newly constructed Florence State Prison. Jose Lopez was the first individual executed by hanging at Florence.

Six years later, the voters passed a ballot measure that abolished the death penalty. Just two years after that, voters reversed course, and executions resumed.

Another chapter in Arizona’s off-again, on-again death penalty history occurred between 1962 and 1992 when no executions were performed. All told, 143 people have been put to death in the state’s history.

Arizona has had its share of botched executions. In 1930, Eva Dugan was decapitated when the state hanged her. In 2014, Joseph Wood  was given 15 doses of a two-drug combination over two hours in another botched execution.

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