Leroy McGill is set to be executed by the State of Arizona for a brutal murder that took place in 2002
According to court documents Leroy McGill would get into an argument with his roommate Charles Perez over a stolen shotgun. Charles would end up kicking Leroy out of the house
Leroy would return a short time later with a container of gasoline, he would douse Charles Perez and set him on fire. Charles would die from his injuries
Leroy McGill would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Leroy McGill is scheduled to be executed on May 20 2026
Update – Leroy McGill was executed on May 20 2026 by lethal injection
Leroy McGill Execution News
Arizona is scheduled to execute by lethal injection a man in his 60s on Wednesday morning in Florence.
Leroy McGill was convicted of first-degree murder and attempted murder in 2004.
According to court documents, McGill in 2002 threw a cup of gasoline and a lit match at Charles Perez and Nova Banta, telling them that they shouldn’t talk about people behind their backs after they accused him of stealing a gun, setting them both on fire. Perez died the next day, while Banta survived and later identified McGill as the assailant
McGill’s lawyers presented evidence about abuse he suffered as a child, mental impairment and psychological immaturity, but he still received a death sentence.
McGill is the first person in Arizona to face execution this year. The state last put a man to death in October.
Arizona’s 1st execution in 2026 is scheduled for this week
Leroy McGill Execution More News
On May 20, Arizona is scheduled to execute its first death row prisoner of the year, and the third since Gov. Katie Hobbs resumed executions in 2025. At 10 a.m. next Wednesday, 63-year-old convicted murderer Leroy McGill will be killed by lethal injection at Arizona State Prison Complex-Florence.
McGill was convicted of first-degree murder in 2004 for killing Charles Perez two years earlier. McGill poured gasoline on Perez and set him on fire. He was also convicted of arson and other charges, including the attempted murder of Perez’s girlfriend, Nova Banta, whom he also burned.
The Arizona Supreme Court issued a warrant for his execution on March 26 after finding that McGill had exhausted the appeals process.
Here’s what to know about the next person Arizona will put to death.
Court documents from the past two decades detail McGill’s crime. Around 3:30 a.m. on July 12, 2002, McGill poured gasoline on Perez and Banta while they sat on a couch next to each other. He then lit a match and threw it at them, lighting them on fire.
McGill burned Perez and Banta because they had accused him of stealing a shotgun.
Banta testified that McGill “looked at me and (Perez) and said (Perez) shouldn’t talk behind other people’s backs, and he poured the gasoline on us and quickly lit a match and threw it at us.” Perez and Banta fled the apartment engulfed in flames. When firefighters arrived, the apartment was also completely on fire.
McGill allegedly told witnesses that he’d mixed pieces of a Styrofoam cup into the gasoline that he poured on them, an act his lawyers dispute. He did this to make a “napalm-like substance that would stick to his victims and cause them more pain,” documents say.
Perez died of his burns a couple of days later on July 14. Banta survived despite suffering from burns on 75% of her body.
The jury deliberated for less than an hour before finding McGill guilty on all counts, according to court records. His lawyers presented mitigating evidence during sentencing, asking for leniency. They said he had an abusive childhood and was mentally impaired. The state then presented evidence that McGill tried to have a potential witness killed and read a letter from Perez’s sister to the jury. The jury sentenced him to death.
McGill appealed his case in state and federal court, arguing that he had ineffective counsel. He also claimed that his sentencing was unconstitutional because of a lapse in Arizona’s death penalty law due to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that found the state law invalid for a period of time that included his sentencing.
Most recently, federal public defenders argued that bad jury instruction during sentencing pushed the jury towards choosing the death penalty as his sentence. The jury was told that if given a life sentence, McGill would be eligible for parole. However, at that time, the state had eliminated parole as an option at sentencing. The public defenders argued that had the jury thought McGill would be locked up for life without parole, they would not have chosen the death penalty.
The Arizona Supreme Court sent the case back to the Maricopa Superior Court to decide McGill’s fate before May 20. The Superior Court denied his petition and McGill decided not to appeal, said Jennifer Garcia, his public defender. McGill also waived his rights to a commutation or clemency hearing, she said, so his execution will proceed as scheduled.
McGill will be the third person executed under Hobbs’ administration since it restarted executions last year.
In 2025, the state of Arizona executed two men, Aaron Gunches and Richard Djerf. Their executions came after a two-year pause in the wake of flawed and controversial executions under previous administrations, including the botched two-hour-long 2014 execution of Joseph Wood.
While running for office, Hobbs said that Arizona would not do executions if it could not do them humanely. She enlisted retired federal judge David Duncan to investigate the state’s execution procedures. However, she fired Duncan before the report was published, saying she didn’t like the direction he’d taken. She specifically cited his recommendation that the state consider using a firing squad instead of lethal injection because the latter could not consistently be performed humanely in practice.
A draft of Duncan’s report was ultimately released, laying out his concerns about transparency and lethal injections. But the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Recovery released its own report, giving its current protocols a green light. At the same time, Hobbs and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes were facing pressure from Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, who threatened to circumvent the two Democrats and seek death warrants from the Arizona Supreme Court herself. Instead, Hobbs and Mayes restarted executions, and the state executed Gunches in March and Djerf in October.
Djerf’s autopsy report, which was released in January, renewed scrutiny of the state’s lethal injection protocols. The report showed that ADCRR medical staff struggled to set an IV line in Djerf’s arms. The autopsy report documented seven needle punctures, three on the right and four on the left. But witnesses described his execution as having gone generally smoothly, and an autopsy revealed no evidence of pulmonary edema.
After McGill’s May 20 execution, 108 people — three women and 105 men — will remain on Arizona’s death row.
Arizona to execute death row prisoner Leroy McGill: What to know
Leroy McGill Execution May 20 2026
Arizona has executed a death row inmate for setting two people on fire more than 20 years ago, killing one of them and changing the other’s life forever.
The state executed Leroy McGill, 63, by lethal injection on Wednesday, May 20, for the 2002 murder of 21-year-old Charles Perez. McGill set Perez and his girlfriend on fire after they accused him of theft, court records say. Perez died of his injuries the next day while his girlfriend survived with severe burns.
“After more than two decades, justice was finally served for Charles Perez and the woman who survived this horrific attack. What Leroy McGill did − pouring gasoline on the victims and setting them on fire − was among the cruelest acts imaginable,” Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said in a statement.
“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,” she said. “May this bring them some measure of peace.”
McGill was pronounced dead at 10:26 a.m. PT. “I’m going home soon,” he said as part of his brief last words in the death chamber as he lay strapped to the execution chair, according to multiple news media members who witnessed the death
McGill’s was the 13th execution in the U.S. this year and the first in 2026 for Arizona. Two more executions are scheduled this week in Tennessee and Florida.
Here’s what you need to know about McGill’s crime and his execution.
On July 13, 2002, Leroy McGill walked into the Phoenix apartment of Charles Perez, 21, and Nova Banta, 24. He then threw a cup of gasoline and set fire to them with a match, court records show. Prosecutors say McGill mixed Styrofoam with the gasoline to create a “napalm-like substance that would stick to his victims and cause them more pain,” an allegations his attorneys deny.
McGill attacked Perez and Banta because the couple had accused him of stealing a shotgun. Before he lit the match, McGill told the couple that they shouldn’t talk about people behind their backs, court records say.
Perez died of his injuries the day after the attack. Banta survived though she had severe burns covering 75% of her body.
In recent months, McGill had been fighting to have his execution stopped, mostly over what his lawyers said were errors by his trial attorneys at the time. Those efforts failed, and he declined to file a clemency petition with the state.
McGill’s last meal included cottage pie, green salad, onion rings, bread and butter, and chocolate cake.
McGill’s is one of three executions being carried out during a two-day period this week. On Thursday, May 21, Tennessee is planning to put Tony Carruthers to death for the 1994 killing of three people at a cemetery, including a woman who was buried alive. Also Thursday, Florida is scheduled to execute Richard Knight for the 2000 stabbing deaths of a pregnant woman and her 4-year-old daughter.
It’s not unusual for multiple executions to be held during the same week or on the same day, with as many as five falling during the same week in recent years. Experts agree that the timing of various states and when they schedule executions is coincidental.
So far this year, states have executed 12 inmates. The executions of McGill, Carruthers and Knight will make that 15. Another nine executions are scheduled for the rest of the year so far but that figure is sure to increase as states can issue death warrants at any time.
Last year, there were 47 executions in the U.S., making it the deadliest year for death row inmates since 2009. Executions this year are running slightly behind the amount conducted during the same time period last year.
Leroy McGill, who set a couple on fire in 2002, is executed in Arizona
