As executions resume, bias, drug effects, and equity are top-of-mind for queer lawmakers.

With the state's history of unequal justice in death sentence rulings, the co-chair of the legislative LGBTQ+ caucus wants to let voters decide if the death penalty should remain.

As Attorney General Kris Mayes lifts the state’s halt on prison executions, LGBTQ+ Caucus Co-chair Rep. Patty Contreras has contemporaneously reintroduced a 2022 measure to ban the punishment.

The bill and Mayes’ decision to resume executions also coincide with news reports that the drug used for lethal injection in Arizona, pentobarbital salt, have been kept in a secret refrigerator inside the department of corrections, unmarked and possibly expired, according to reporting from the AZ Mirror.

And earlier this month, former U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland withdrew the lethal drug from its execution protocol, saying it would cause “unnecessary pain and suffering.”

Arizona still remains one of 27 states in the U.S. that continues to hand down and carry out the death sentence. The state has executed a total of 40 people since the revision of the Death Penalty Statute, with 111 prisoners still currently serving on Death Row.

Both co-chairs of the LGBTQ+ caucus, Phoenix Reps. Contreras and Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos, have sponsored the bill to end the state’s death penalty.