Idaho’s first lethal injection execution happened 30 years ago. A look back at it and other death penalty cases.
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IDAHO FALLS – Keith Wells lay on a table at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution in Boise 21 months after being sentenced to death by 4th District Judge Gerald Schroeder.
It was 12:40 a.m. on Thursday, Jan. 6, 1994. The 31-year-old Pocatello man was moments away from being the first convicted killer in Idaho to die by lethal injection.
Though Wells had been in and out of jail nearly his entire adult life for 30 different drug-related thefts and assaults, it was his Oct. 1991 conviction for beating to death with a baseball bat two people in a Boise tavern the previous December that landed him on death row.
Efforts were made to appeal the judge’s decision, but Wells demanded the execution take place. He had tried to kill himself in jail shortly after his conviction and did not want to spend the rest of his life in a concrete cell.
He confessed to the 1990 murders of John Justad, 23, and Brandi Rains, 20, without remorse two weeks earlier, according to the Associated Press. But during his final hours, which he spent with Chaplain Jack Risner of the Mount Hood Christian Center in Oregon, he called KTVB anchorwoman Dee Sarton and apologized to the victims’ families.
“I would like to ask for their forgiveness because it just happened,” Wells said, according to Sarton. “I am very sorry.”
Wells, who’d grown up as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, told reporters he was obeying God by offering the apology.
Wells had a hearty last meal days earlier, which consisted of lobster and prime rib, fried potatoes, salad with tomatoes, onion and Italian dressing, two pints of ice cream, a half gallon of milk, a two-liter bottle of soda and two apple fritters.
He’d visited with his wife, Cindy, and other members of his family for several hours on Tuesday and spoke with his wife again for about two hours the next day.
Cindy told the AP she and her husband had made their peace in their final meeting. A court order authorizing the visit required Wells to be fully restrained because he’d grabbed his wife by the throat sometime during his imprisonment.
“Keith and I know we’ll meet again. That’s why we can let him go,” Cindy told reporters as she held her 6-year-old daughter, Tabitha, on her lap after her final visit with Wells.
As the execution was about to begin, Wells reportedly looked at the 17 witnesses in attendance and smiled before looking at the ceiling. Some of the witnesses that day included his parents, Paul and Loral (who have since passed away), multiple siblings and his wife.
Wells said nothing in those final moments, but he “blinked and swallowed several times after the injections, took a deep breath after about two minutes and (went) to sleep.”
He was declared dead at 12:50 a.m.
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More than two weeks after the failed execution of Thomas Creech — who would’ve been the state’s 30th man to be executed (no women have been executed in Idaho) — we thought it was worth looking back at previous death penalty cases. This year marks the 30th anniversary of Wells’ death by lethal injection, but Idaho’s first executions date back even further and were handled differently.
History of executions in Idaho
Idaho has carried out 29 executions since 1864. Death by hanging was the state’s method of execution until 1957.
Three of Idaho’s first executions happened on the same day. David Howard, Chris Lowery and Jim Romaine were hanged at the same time for murder and burglary in Nez Perce County on March 4, 1864. Other than that, almost no details about the first set of executions in Idaho exist.
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The second execution happened in Ada County on January 24, 1868. Anthony McBride, a 24-year-old soldier, was hanged after being convicted of the murder of a Chinese man on the Payette River.
McBride reportedly claimed it was an accident and tried to justify the killing by saying he was shooting at an animal.
Three doctors visited McBride to rule out insanity after he also tried to use that as part of his defense. The appeal didn’t work, and McBride was executed.
Raymond Snowden, who is referred to in one article as Idaho’s Jack the Ripper, was the last man to die by hanging in the Gem State. He was executed on Oct. 18, 1957. The murder he committed “was particularly brutal and incredibly heinous” and some consider him the most infamous killer in state history as a result.
Snowden apparently stabbed a woman — identified as Cora Dean, a mother of two — outside a bar in Garden City. He slashed her throat and stabbed her more than 30 times with a pocket knife on Sept. 22, 1956.
He’d been bar hopping and encountered Dean at his last stop in Garden City. She’d been drinking as well and was intoxicated at the time of her death, according to court records.
“It’s thought that she rejected sexual advances by Snowden before he killed her. Snowden claimed he hit Cora Dean and she, in turn, kicked him,” the article says.
Dean’s body was discovered by a paperboy the next day. Snowden was arrested at Hannifin’s Cigar Store in Boise. He is believed to have entered the shop to use the restroom and wash the blood off his hands after hiding the knife in a sewer drain in front of the business.
During an interrogation that lasted at least eight hours, he initially denied knowing anything about the crime before eventually confessing.
“Authorities described Snowden as a ‘sex psychopath’ and alluded to additional grisly details of Dean’s murder they did not wish to disclose until Snowden’s trial. An autopsy revealed that Snowden inflicted sexualized cuts on Dean’s body,” an article about the case says.
He pleaded guilty on Oct. 18 after initially pleading not guilty 13 days earlier. A court convicted him of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death.
At that time, prisoners on death row were housed in the Old Idaho State Penitentiary in Boise.
A news clipping from the Idaho Statesman says Snowden ate lobster for his last meal, which he didn’t finish.
The warden reported the condemned man “in good spirits” moments before his death.
He was led to the gallows just after midnight. The warden said Snowden was “outwardly calm and ‘stood up very well.'”
“Asked by the warden if he had anything to say before the trap was sprung, Snowden replied: ‘I can’t put into words what I want to say,'” the Statesman said.
He was hanged at 12:05 a.m. and Snowden was declared dead at 12:20 a.m. His family chose not to claim his body so he was buried in the cemetery behind the penitentiary.
Rethinking the death penalty
Years after Snowden’s death, the death penalty was temporarily suspended in the U.S.
In 1972, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case put a moratorium on executions over concerns about inconsistencies in how they were carried out. There were also concerns about possible violations of the eighth amendment, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment.
Gregg v. Georgia, a supreme court case in 1976, played a role in getting the death penalty reinstated. It established limitations to prevent it from being used excessively and defined ways it could be applied that didn’t violate the eighth amendment.
Idaho introduced lethal injection as an alternate method of execution in 1978.
“The punishment of death shall be inflicted by continuous, intravenous administration of a lethal quantity of a substance or substances approved by the director of the Idaho Department of Correction until death is pronounced by a coroner or a deputy coroner,” the bill said.
Today, Idaho is one of 27 states that has an active capital punishment law. Last year, a bill allowing prisoner execution by firing squad was signed into law.
Wells’ death by lethal injection in 1994 became the state’s first execution in 36 years.
A senseless killing for a man with a long criminal record
In an interview with the Associated Press days before his death, Wells said he’d toyed with alcohol and cigarettes at age 4 and was smoking pot at age 10.
Court records cited “fighting and truancy back to his grade school years,” according to the paper.
By ninth grade, Wells had a drug habit that cost him $200 a month for amphetamines and marijuana. He was stealing regularly to pay for drugs, including stealing money and household items from family and friends.
An AP article covering Wells’ execution has a quote from him saying he killed the people in the bar that night because “it was time for them to die.”
Though he hadn’t targeted them specifically, he told police he was under pressure for being on parole for other crimes and was exhausted from walking around that day.
“It was more like a predator on the prowl for prey,” Wells said. “When I left home that night, I knew that someone was going to die.”
The initial report about the murder said robbery may have been a motive because “the assailant … grabbed cash from the bar and fled out the back door.” The amount of money was not reported.
Police believed only one person was involved in the murder and there was evidence Justad, a customer at the bar, tried to defend himself.
The AP reported Justad worked for a local beer distributor at that time and had just been discharged from the Idaho National Guard. Rains, who was the bartender, was engaged to be married.
In a 2011 interview with KTVB, Justad’s sister, Jan Englund, recalled what happened that night. She said her brother was helping Rains close the bar. Wells came in, followed him down the hall and beat him in the back of the head as he was standing in front of the bathroom. Wells then killed Rains because she saw what happened, she said.
Englund requested to be in the room for Wells’ execution but was denied.
Englund said Justad was the youngest sibling and the only boy in her family. He was “very sweet” and “would have done anything for anybody,” she said.
“(Justad) was just starting his life out,” Englund told KTVB last year. “He was getting ready to move in with a roommate. I just had a baby. He was all excited about that. He came over all the time to see him. It was just such a loss because he was so young. It was so violent and so abrupt. You wonder if he would’ve gotten married, how many kids he would have, typical things. He was such a nice, nice young man.”
EastIdahoNews.com has been unsuccessful at getting in touch with Wells’ family members, but in news reports at the time, they said he had a good heart, despite his long criminal history.
They didn’t condone his behavior, though a sister, Cherie Fehringer — who passed away in 2004 — had some doubts about the facts presented in the case. She believed her brother had an accomplice because there was DNA evidence under the fingernails of the victims that did not match Keith’s.
Wells’ life could have been different if the system had intervened years earlier and treated him for his addictions, family members said.
Wells expressed a much different point of view in an interview with the Idaho Statesman, saying no one could have helped him.
“I wasn’t willing to listen to anyone,” Wells is reported to have said. “I was so hateful that I had turned myself over to Satan, sort of, ‘Satan, do with me what you will.’ Talk like that gets you put in a nut house.”