Idaho inmate execution delayed after ‘botched’ lethal injection
Officials in Idaho failed to execute one of the nation’s longest-serving death row inmates Wednesday after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a last-minute petition to have his execution put on hold.
Thomas Eugene Creech was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Wednesday, according to the Idaho Department of Correction, in what would have been the state’s first execution in 12 years. Creech, 73, was convicted of five murders in three states and landed on death row after killing a fellow prisoner in 1981.
The medical team at- tempted to establish IV access eight times in multiple places and encountered issues with both accessing the veins and the quality of the veins, department director Josh Tewalt said at a news conference Wednesday. Tewalt said once the team’s leader determined it was unlikely they would be able to establish IV access, they halted the execution. As a result, the death warrant issued for Creech will expire and state officials will consider next steps, according to a statement from the Department of Correction.
“We are angered but not surprised that the State of Idaho botched the execution of Thomas Creech today,” Federal Defender Services of Idaho said in a statement. “This is what happens when unknown individuals with unknown training are assigned to carry out an execution.”
Tewalt said while the execution was unsuccessful, he believes it would be wrong to call it a failure and his confidence in the medical team remains high.
The failed execution comes after Creech’s attorneys filed several late appeals in an attempt to halt the execution or convert his sentence to life without release, but lower court judges found no grounds for leniency. Creech’s attorneys filed a petition to the Supreme Court on Monday asking to stay the execution and claiming his due process rights were violated when prosecutors lied during his clemency hearing. His application for a stay of execution was denied Wednesday, according to court documents.
Creech’s attorneys immediately filed a new motion for a stay in U.S. District Court, saying, “Given the badly botched execution attempt this morning, which proves IDOC’s inability to carry out a humane and constitutional execution, undersigned counsel preemptively seek an emergency stay of execution to prevent any further attempts today.”
Federal Defender Services of Idaho also criticized the state for attempting the execution “in circumstances completely shielded in secrecy despite a well-known history of getting drugs from shady sources.”
Idaho is one of three states that recently increased secrecy around execution proceedings, the Death Penalty Information Center said in 2022. The center deemed 2022 the “Year of the Botched Execution” after 35% of the 20 execution attempts were botched due to the incompetence of executioners, failure of protocol or flaws in the protocol design.
Creech was arrested in 1974 after he fatally shot Thomas Arnold and John Bradford, two painters who had picked up him and his girlfriend while they were hitchhiking in Idaho. That same year, he killed Vivian Grant Robinson at her home in Sacramento, California, a crime he confessed to while in custody in Idaho and was convicted of in 1980. Creech also shot and killed William Joseph Dean in 1974 while he was living in Portland, Oregon. He was also charged with killing Sandra Jane Ramsamooj in Oregon that year, but the charge was later dropped in light of his other murder sentences.
It’s not clear how many people Creech killed before he was imprisoned in 1974 in Idaho. He claimed at one point to have killed as many as 50 people, but official estimates vary, and authorities tend to focus on 11 deaths.
Creech was sentenced to death for killing the painters in Idaho, but his sentence was converted to life in prison in 1976 after the U.S. Supreme Court barred automatic death sentences. In 1981, Creech killed David Jensen, a man who was serving time for car theft, with a battery-filled sock and was later placed back on death row.