Arizona puts Leroy McGill to death in state’s 1st execution of 2026

Convicted killer Leroy Dean McGill was put to death by lethal injection Wednesday in Arizona’s first execution of 2026.

May 20, 2026, 10:53 AM Updated: 11:35 am

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Convicted killer Leroy Dean McGill was put to death by lethal injection Wednesday in Arizona’s first execution of 2026.

Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry officials said the procedure at the State Prison Complex in Florence went according to plan.

An ADCRR official who witnessed the execution cited McGill’s last words as: “I just want to thank everyone for being so accommodating and nice.”

McGill was pronounced dead at 10:26 a.m., 15 minutes after the start of the drug protocol.

His last meal included onion rings, bread and butter, chocolate cake, cottage pie and a green salad.

Why was Leroy McGill sentenced to death?

McGill was sentenced to die in 2004 after a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and other charges related to a deadly fire in Phoenix.

Authorities said McGill doused Charles Perez and Perez’s girlfriend, Nova Banta, with gasoline and set them on fire with a match in July 2002. Perez did not survive the blaze, but Banta did. She later identified McGill as the killer and testified against him.

“After more than two decades, justice was finally served for Charles Perez and the woman who survived this horrific attack,” Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said in a statement. “What Leroy McGill did … was among the cruelest acts imaginable. My thoughts are with the family of Charles Perez and the survivor, who has lived with the physical and emotional scars of that night for nearly 24 years. May this bring them some measure of peace.”

Recent history of Arizona executions

Arizona put two inmates to death in 2025 — Aaron Gunches and Richard Djerf — after a hiatus of over two years.

Soon after taking office in 2023, Gov. Katie Hobbs paused executions and ordered a review of the process to ensure the state could carry them out without violating any laws.

That came after the state carried out the death penalty three times in 2022 following an eight-year moratorium in the wake of the botched execution of Joseph Wood. In July 2014, Wood was given 15 doses of a two-drug combination over two hours before his heart stopped.

Arizona now has 108 inmates on death row.

Last week, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld the death penalty for Edward McCauley, who was sentenced in 2020. McCauley was convicted in 2019 of murdering his estranged wife in 2014.

McGill’s execution was the 13^th in the United States this year. Two more are scheduled for Thursday in Tennessee and Florida.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.