Failed execution attempt gave death row prisoner a reprieve. Idaho will try again soon

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BOISE (Idaho Statesman) — A day after Idaho prison’s system advised that it is again ready to perform a lethal injection, an Ada County judge issued the latest death warrant for Thomas Creech, the state’s longest-serving death row prisoner, and scheduled him for another execution.

Creech, 74, who has been incarcerated for nearly a half-century, is now set to be executed on Nov. 13. If fulfilled, the execution would be Idaho’s first in more than a dozen years.

Prison officials called off Creech’s planned execution earlier this year after they were unable to locate a suitable vein for an IV to inject him with the lethal chemicals. In turn, he became the first prisoner in Idaho to survive an execution attempt, and just the sixth to survive one by lethal injection in U.S. history, according to the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.

Creech was returned to death row following his failed execution and has awaited the state’s next move for nearly eight months. He was served with a follow-up death warrant Wednesday at 10:15 a.m. and moved from death row to a cell near the prison’s execution chamber, the Idaho Department of Correction said in a news release.

IDOC Director Josh Tewalt affirmed in the news release that the execution would occur by lethal injection. Idaho allows a firing squad as the state’s backup execution method when lethal injection drugs are unavailable, but has yet to construct an execution chamber to provide for the option.

IDOC said it would have no further comment about Creech’s forthcoming execution, citing ongoing litigation.

Creech’s attorneys with the Federal Defender Services of Idaho blasted state officials for planning another attempt to end their client’s life after what they labeled a “botched execution” in February.

“We are heartbroken and angered that Idaho would try again to execute Thomas Creech using virtually the same process and team of executioners, and before conducting any official review of what led to the botched attempt to take his life earlier this year,” Deborah A. Czuba, a supervising attorney with the legal nonprofit, said in a statement. “The level of recklessness puts Idaho in a class by itself.”

Three of the other five U.S. prisoners who survived after botched lethal injection attempts later died of natural causes. In the other two cases, both in Alabama, the prisoners were executed this year by the novel method of nitrogen asphyxiation, including one last month.

In recent months, Creech alleged in a lawsuit that he has suffered a number of health conditions as a result of the execution attempt and argued a repeat execution would represent cruel and unusual punishment. Ada County District Judge Jason Scott dismissed Creech’s case last month, and signed his death warrant Wednesday.

“I laid on that table and fully expected to die that day,” Creech told the Idaho Statesman in phone interview from the prison in June. “And actually, to be honest with you, I still feel like I’m dead and this is just the afterlife.”

Scott on Wednesday also issued an order denying a request from Creech’s state appeals attorneys for the judge to reconsider his ruling that dismissed Creech’s case asserting possible constitutional violations.

Statesman requests for comment to the Ada County Prosecutor’s Office, Idaho Attorney General’s Office and Gov. Brad Little’s Office were not immediately returned.

IDAHO TO USE CENTRAL LINE IV IN LETHAL INJECTIONS IF NEEDED

With its changes announced Tuesday, Idaho’s prison system will now pursue a central line IV to inject a prisoner rather than a standard IV, known as peripheral access, if needed. The execution team was not previously trained to insert a central line, which accesses a person’s body through the internal jugular in the neck, a femoral vein in the upper thigh or a subclavian vein in the chest.

The state’s revised approach to its execution process will lead prison officials to again attempt next month to satisfy Creech’s decades-old death sentence for murdering a fellow maximum security prisoner in 1981. Creech was previously found guilty of murdering two men in Valley County in 1974.

In addition, Creech was convicted of two other murders — one in Oregon and one in California — after his initial Idaho murder convictions. He’s also suspected of perhaps as many as dozens of other murders across the western U.S. and is commonly described as a “serial killer” by state officials.

Creech’s newest death warrant is his 13th since he was first sentenced to death in 1976. He avoided execution the first 11 times up until February’s attempt. Now the state plans to try again.

“The state is sacrificing common decency and humanity in its haste for an execution. Mr. Creech’s legal team is fighting to save (his) life on many fronts,” Czuba’s statement read. “We hope the courts will recognize the cruel and unusual level of punishment that this remorseful and harmless old man has already been through, and stop a needless execution.”