Mark Gooch is now incarcerated at the Arizona State Prison Complex–Eyman in Florence, Arizona, serving a natural life sentence for the 2020 murder of Sasha Krause. He was convicted in October 2021 and sentenced on January 19, 2022, and the Arizona Court of Appeals affirmed his convictions in April 2023. He will not be released.
Where Gooch Is Incarcerated
Gooch is held at ASPC Eyman, a large state prison in Florence, Arizona, with capacity for roughly 6,800 inmates. The complex contains one maximum-security unit, one high-custody unit, and several other housing units.1Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation & Reentry. Eyman According to his parents, Gooch has turned to religion behind bars, though the specific denomination has not been made public.
What a Natural Life Sentence Means in Arizona
The sentence handed down by Judge Cathleen Brown Nichols was natural life, the most restrictive form of life imprisonment Arizona law allows. Under the state’s sentencing statute, a natural life term bars the inmate from commutation, parole, work furlough, work release, or release from confinement on any basis.2Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 13-705 – Dangerous Crimes Against Children; Sentences; Definitions The court also imposed an additional five years for kidnapping, to run consecutively with the life sentence.3Office of Special Investigations. Airman Gets Life Sentence for Murder, Kidnapping
In plain terms, there is no release date to count down to. The statute closes every ordinary door out of prison at once.
The Appeal Has Already Failed
Gooch challenged his convictions on direct appeal, and on April 13, 2023, the Arizona Court of Appeals affirmed every conviction and sentence.4Justia Case Law. State v. Gooch
His arguments included claims of prosecutorial misconduct, a misstatement of the premeditation standard during closing arguments, and a jurisdictional challenge to the Arizona theft charge because Krause’s belongings had originally been taken in New Mexico. The appellate court rejected each one. On the misconduct claim, it found nothing that “so infected the trial with unfairness as to make the resulting conviction a denial of due process.” On premeditation, it held that the trial judge’s accurate jury instructions cured any potential confusion. On jurisdiction, the court reasoned that because Gooch discarded the victim’s property in Arizona, the intended consequence of the crime occurred within the state.4Justia Case Law. State v. Gooch
Why Clemency Is Not an Option
Arizona has a Board of Executive Clemency with authority to consider commutation, but its own policies treat inmates who are statutorily ineligible as outside its reach.5Arizona Board of Executive Clemency. Board Policy 114 – Commutation of Sentence Because the natural life statute explicitly bars commutation, the clemency board cannot shorten this sentence. Barring an extraordinary and unprecedented legal development, Mark Gooch will die in prison.
The Case That Put Him There
Sasha Krause was a 27-year-old teacher in a conservative Mennonite community in Farmington, New Mexico. She went to the Farmington Mennonite Church on the evening of January 18, 2020, to gather Sunday school materials and never returned. On February 22, 2020, a camper found her body near Sunset Crater National Monument outside Flagstaff, Arizona, more than 270 miles away. An autopsy showed her wrists had been bound with duct tape and that she died from a gunshot wound to the back of her head combined with blunt force trauma.
Gooch, then a 21-year-old Airman First Class stationed at Luke Air Force Base near Phoenix, became a suspect after cell phone records placed his phone alongside Krause’s at the same towers on the night she disappeared, and near the site where her body was later found. He was arrested on April 21, 2020. A Coconino County jury convicted him in October 2021 of first-degree murder, kidnapping, and misdemeanor theft. He had no prior criminal record, and his attorneys presented his military service as a mitigating factor, but it did not change the sentence.