Arizona Executes Leroy Dean McGill for 2002 Murder by Arson

An Arizona prisoner who killed a man by throwing gasoline at him and lighting him on fire has been executed by lethal injection, marking the first of three planned executions across the United States this week. Leroy Dean McGill, 63, was pronounced dead at 10:26 a.m. PT Wednesday at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence. McGill had been sentenced to death for the murder of Charles Perez, who was attacked alongside his girlfriend in a north Phoenix apartment in 2002. [...] This follows a nearly eight-year hiatus in Arizona’s use of capital punishment, prompted by difficulties in obtaining execution drugs and criticism surrounding a botched 2014 execution where Joseph Wood was injected 15 times over two hours, leading to repeated snorting and gasping before his death. The state’s current execution protocol involves administering two syringes of the sedative pentobarbital.