Aaron Gunches is not going to get his wish to be executed on Valentine’s Day.

In an order Jan. 8, the Arizona Supreme Court rejected a Gunches pleading to forgo any more legal maneuvering and finally put him to death after he pleaded guilty to the 2002 murder and kidnapping charges of Ted Price, his girlfriend’s ex-husband. Instead, the justices said they want to hear arguments from all sides, including Attorney General Kris Mayes, who wants Gunches executed, but not on his schedule.

The justices also rejected a last-ditch effort by a law professor at the University of Richmond School of Law to intercede in the case.

Corinna Barrett Lain argued that whatever improvements the state Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry has made to its lethal injection procedures still do not ensure that Gunches will not suffer severe pain. She said pentobarbital, the drug the state uses for executions, causes inmates to “drown in their own fluids,” something she said is “excruciatingly painful, causing individuals to experience the sensation of being waterboarded.”

But Chief Justice Ann Scott Timmer, writing the order, said questions about the conviction and sentencing should have been addressed at the trial court. The only issue before the Supreme Court, Timmer said, are whether the conditions have been met to issue a warrant of execution.

What all this now means is that Mayes’ office has to file its request for the warrant by the afternoon of Jan. 10. After that, the court will hear any responses, including from Gunches, who while he has advisory counsel, has been representing himself.

Then the state will get until the end of the month to reply to anything else.

At this point, Timmer said the court is looking to meet on Feb. 11. And if the justices are satisfied that the laws are being followed, they then will issue the necessary warrant, one that the state would have to carry out exactly 35 days later. That provides time for the state corrections department to “compound” the pentobarbital.

If the execution goes forward on March 18, it will be the first since Mayes suspended seeking such warrants shortly after taking office in January 2023.

That followed a decision by Gov. Katie Hobbs, also newly elected, to appoint a special “death penalty commissioner” to study how the state is handling the practice. The governor said there had been a series of “botched executions” in Arizona, all conducted using lethal injection.

Retired federal magistrate David Duncan, in a preliminary report last year, raised questions about whether it was possible to humanely put someone to death in that manner. He said if the state was going to continue with executions, the most humane might be to use a firing squad.

Hobbs then fired Duncan. And she simultaneously concluded that she was confident that a review of the process conducted by Ryan Thornell, her choice to head the prison system, shows the state is now again ready to resume executions without some of the prior problems.

Mayes was asking the Supreme Court to start the process of the necessary legal briefings when Gunches, in a hand-written pleading, told the justices they should skip all that. Referring to himself in the third person, he wrote that they should simply issue the warrant for Feb. 14 “where Gunches may have his long-overdue sentence carried out.”

The Jan. 8 order does not specifically explain why the court rejected his plea.

But a separate press release says the court “remains committed to ensuring that justice is carried out in accordance with the law while maintaining fairness and transparency in its proceedings.”

Three inmates were executed in 2022 by lethal injection, with reports saying in some cases there was evidence of problems with prison staffers inserting the intravenous lines, which resulted in pain and bleeding. That is what led Mayes to suspend all requests for execution warrants.

Prior to that, there had been an eight-year pause following the botched procedure where Joseph Wood was given 15 doses of a two-drug combination over two hours.

Gunches is one of 111 inmates on death row. Of that, 25, including Gunches, have either exhausted or waived all appeals.