Federal judge temporarily halts Idaho’s plan to try a second time to execute a man on death row

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A federal judge has temporarily halted the planned execution of an Idaho man on death row whose first lethal injection attempt was botched earlier this year.

Thomas Eugene Creech was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Nov. 13 — roughly nine months after the state first tried and failed to execute him. Execution team members tried eight locations in Creech’s arms and legs on Feb. 28 but could not find a viable vein to deliver the lethal drug.

U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow issued the stay this week in a lawsuit from Creech that contends it would be cruel and unusual punishment to try to execute him again after the first lethal injection attempt was botched in February. Creech’s defense team also has another legal case underway claiming that prosecutors acted improperly during his clemency hearing.

The Idaho Department of Correction declined to comment on the postponement because the lawsuit is ongoing but said it will take at least until the end of the month for both sides to file the written copies of their arguments with the court.

“Per IDOC policy, Mr. Creech has been returned to his previous housing assignment in J-Block and execution preparations have been suspended,” department public information officer Sanda Kuzeta-Cerimagic said in a statement.

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Creech, 74, is the state’s longest-serving person on death row. He has been in prison for half a century, convicted of five murders in three states and suspected of several more. He was already serving a life term when he beat another person in prison with him, 22-year-old David Dale Jensen, to death in 1981 — the crime for which he was to be executed.

In the decades since, Creech has become known inside the walls of the Idaho Maximum Security Institution as a generally well-behaved person who sometimes writes poetry. His bid for clemency before the last execution attempt found support from a former warden at the penitentiary, prison staffers who recounted how he wrote them poems of support or condolence and the judge who sentenced Creech to death.

After the last execution attempt failed, the Idaho Department of Correction announced it would use new protocols for lethal injection when execution team members are unable to place a peripheral IV line, close to the surface of the skin. The new policy allows the execution team to place a central venous catheter, a more complex and invasive process that involves using the deeper, large veins of the neck, groin, chest or upper arm to run a catheter deep inside a person’s body until it reaches the heart.

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This story was first published on Nov. 6, 2024. It was updated Nov. 8, 2024, to correct that Snow issued the stay in a lawsuit from Creech that contends it would be cruel and unusual punishment to try to execute him again after the first lethal injection attempt was botched, not in another legal case underway claiming that prosecutors acted improperly during his clemency hearing.