FLORENCE, ARIZ. — Leroy Dean McGill, 63, was pronounced dead at 10:26 a.m. PDT on May 20, 2026, following a lethal injection at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence, corrections officials said. It was the first lethal injection carried out in Arizona in 2026 and the first of three executions planned that week around the United States.

McGill was convicted of murder in the July 2002 death of Charles Perez. He threw gasoline and a lit match at Perez and Perez's girlfriend, Nova Banta, as they sat on a sofa in a north Phoenix apartment on July 13, 2002, authorities said. Perez died later at a hospital after suffering what prosecutors described as extreme pain, and Banta suffered third-degree burns over three-quarters of her body. Another man who lived in the apartment used a blanket to put out the flames on Banta.

At the time of the attack, McGill was using methamphetamine and had not slept in several days. Perez and Banta had accused McGill of stealing a gun from the apartment before the attack. At trial, Banta testified that McGill told her and Perez not to talk behind people's backs before he lit them on fire.

Jurors deliberated for less than an hour before convicting McGill of murder in October 2004. He was also convicted of attempted murder for attacking Banta, arson and endangerment of people who escaped without injuries when the fire spread. A jury returned a sentence of death.

In the spring of 2026, McGill's lawyers made a bid to get him resentenced, but a lower-court judge rejected it. The Arizona Supreme Court declined a request to postpone the execution. McGill declined an interview request and waived his right to seek clemency.

Before the injection began, McGill looked at the witnesses, smiled and nodded. It took one attempt on each of his arms to successfully insert IVs. "I'm going home soon," McGill said during the execution process. His last words were, "I just want to thank everyone for being so accommodating and nice."

"Today's process went according to plan," said John Barcello, deputy director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry. The state's execution protocol calls for administering two syringes of pentobarbital.

Twelve people have been executed in the United States so far in 2026, and Tennessee and Florida are each scheduled to carry out an execution on Thursday, May 21, 2026. In 2025, Arizona executed Richard Kenneth Djerf for the 1993 killings of four members of a Phoenix family, and Aaron Gunches for the 2002 fatal shooting of his girlfriend's ex-husband. The state carried out three executions in 2022 following a nearly eight-year hiatus that was due to difficulties obtaining execution drugs and criticism that a 2014 execution was botched. In that 2014 execution, Joseph Wood was injected with 15 doses of a two-drug combination over two hours, causing him to snort repeatedly and gasp hundreds of times before he died. With McGill's death, Arizona has 108 prisoners on death row.