Journalists’ Roundtable: new AZ Senate spot

Jan. 20, 2023

Breaking story about Governor and the death penalty

“It’s not clear yet if she doesn’t support the death penalty at all, but she talked to reporters about this new commission that she wants to create to examine how we do the death penalty,” said Sanchez.

Attorney General, Kris Mayes, is fighting to not execute a gentlemen that is currently on death row.

Does the Governor want to appoint someone to review all aspects?

“About eight years ago there was a problematic execution in Arizona, it took more than an hour for the convict to die. Multiple efforts to inject him with lethal drugs failed, and he finally did die. We had an eight year hiatus, they brought the death penalty back this year. That doesn’t mean that the questions have been answered about the death penalty protocol, the type of drugs, the training of the people who do it, whether we can mess up another,” said Christie.

Is more transparency needed in the process?

“That’s what the Governor is asking for. The Attorney General’s action might have the more concrete impact if she is asking to withdraw the state’s motion to move ahead with the only execution that was actually in the process of moving towards capital punishment in the state of Arizona,” said Phillips.

If there aren’t many changes happening now, we can expect to see pauses in these executions due to the power of the Governor and Attorney General to put a stop to it.

Is this a surprise?

“I know the Cap Times wrote about the fact that Brnovich was moving forward with that and it was an initiative of his maybe because he wanted to say that he was doing something on the issue when he was running. Kris Mayes has been saying that she doesn’t really support the practice in general, so I think it could be the future of this administration,” said Sanchez.