phoenix — An Arizona prisoner was convicted of killing another man by throwing gasoline on him and Match lighting He is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday, the first of three executions planned this week across the United States.
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 gasoline and a lit match at Perez and Perez’s girlfriend, Nova Banta, while they were sitting on a couch 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 had not slept for several days.
Banta survived the attack, but Perez died.
Twelve people have been executed so far this year in the United States. Both Tennessee and Florida are scheduled to carry out the death penalty on 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 set them on fire, authorities said.
Perez and Banta fled the apartment. Another man living in the apartment used a blanket to extinguish the flames on Banta, who suffered third-degree burns over three-quarters of her body. Perez later died in hospital after suffering what prosecutors described as severe pain.
Banta identified McGill as the attacker during the trial.
Jurors deliberated for less than an hour before convicting McGill of murder in Perez’s death in October 2004. He was also convicted of attempted murder for attacking Banta, arson and endangering people who fled without injury when the fire forced them to flee the apartment and an adjacent unit as the flames spread.
McGill’s lawyers had asked for leniency by presenting evidence of the abuse he suffered as a child, as well as mental disability and psychological immaturity. The jury eventually returned a death sentence.
This spring, McGill’s lawyers made a final bid to have him re-sentenced, but it was rejected by the lower court judge. The Arizona Supreme Court also denied a request from McGill’s attorneys to postpone the execution.
McGill, who declined an interview request from The Associated Press, waived his right to seek clemency.
The state of Arizona last implemented the death penalty in 2025, when it was carried out Richard Kenneth Jerfe Charged with the murder of four members of the Phoenix family in 1993 Aaron Gonches For the fatal shooting of his girlfriend’s ex-husband in 2002.
The state implemented Three executions in 2022 After a hiatus of nearly eight years due to difficulties in obtaining execution drugs and criticism that an execution in 2014 was a failure. In this execution, Joseph Wood was injected with a substance 15 doses A combination of two drugs over the course of two hours, causing him to snort repeatedly and gasp hundreds of times before he died.
The state’s execution protocol calls for two injections of the sedative pentobarbital, according to the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry.
Arizona currently has 109 inmates on death row.