Arizona executed Leroy Dean McGill on Wednesday for the 2002 killing of Charles Perez after officials said McGill threw gasoline on Perez and Perez’s girlfriend, Nova Banta, and then set them on fire. McGill, 63, was pronounced dead at 10:26 a.m. PDT at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence following a lethal injection, the first of three executions planned by Arizona this week around the U.S., according to the Associated Press.
In a statement carried by the Associated Press, John Barcello, deputy director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry, said the execution “went according to plan.” Barcello also quoted McGill’s last words as, “I just want to thank everyone for being so accommodating and nice,” after the lethal dose began flowing.
Witnesses reported a brief series of observations during the procedure. The Associated Press media witness Josh Kelety said he heard McGill at one point say, “I’m going home soon.” Another media witness, Sean Rice from Phoenix television station KPN, said he observed a slight twitching on the right side of McGill’s head about four minutes before the inmate was pronounced dead, and Rice said he did not see any issue finding a vein on either arm.
According to authorities, the attack occurred on July 13, 2002, when McGill threw gasoline at Perez and Banta as they sat on a sofa inside a north Phoenix apartment and then lit a match. Banta survived with third-degree burns over about three-quarters of her body, authorities said, while Perez died later at a hospital.
Prosecutors said Perez and Banta had accused McGill of stealing a gun from the apartment before the attack. Authorities also said McGill was using methamphetamine and hadn’t slept in several days, and that at trial Banta testified McGill told her and Perez not to talk behind people’s backs before lighting them on fire.
The AP reported that jurors deliberated for less than an hour before convicting McGill of murder in Perez’s death in October 2004. It also reported that he was convicted of attempted murder for attacking Banta, as well as arson and endangerment charges tied to other residents who escaped when the fire forced them to flee the apartment and a nearby unit.
McGill’s lawyers sought to avoid the death sentence in the years and final weeks before Wednesday’s execution. The Associated Press reported that McGill’s lawyers made a last-ditch bid to get him resentenced this spring by presenting evidence about abuse he suffered as a child and about mental impairment and psychological immaturity, but a lower-court judge rejected the request and the Arizona Supreme Court declined a separate request to postpone the execution.
The Associated Press reported that McGill waived his right to seek clemency and declined an interview request. Arizona last applied the death penalty in 2025, executing Richard Kenneth Djerf for a 1993 killing of four members of a Phoenix family and Aaron Gunches for a 2002 fatal shooting involving his girlfriend’s ex-husband.
The AP said the state’s current execution protocol calls for administering two syringes of pentobarbital, and that it carried out three executions in 2022 after a nearly eight-year hiatus that included difficulties obtaining execution drugs and criticism that a 2014 execution was botched. It also reported that in the 2014 execution, Joseph Wood was injected with 15 doses of a two-drug combination over two hours.
With McGill’s execution, Arizona had 108 prisoners on death row, the AP reported. The AP also said Tennessee and Florida each were scheduled to carry out an execution Thursday.