Idaho Halts First Lethal Injection Execution in 12 Years After Failure to Establish I.V. Lines

Thomas Creech’s February 28 exe­cu­tion was halt­ed after the Idaho Department of Correction exe­cu­tion team was unable to set an intra­venous line after an hour of repeat­ed attempts. Mr. Creech remained strapped to the gur­ney and con­scious while unsuc­cess­ful attempts were made to access veins in both arms and legs. Officials did not dis­close why the exe­cu­tion team was unable to estab­lish an IV line, but the train­ing and qual­i­fi­ca­tions of staff, as well as the acces­si­bil­i­ty and qual­i­ty of Mr. Creech’s veins, could have been fac­tors. Mr. Creech’s attor­neys pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed that he suf­fers from Type 2 dia­betes, hyper­ten­sion, and ede­ma, which could impact cir­cu­la­tion and vein qual­i­ty. An attempt to set a sec­ond exe­cu­tion date for Mr. Creech would raise con­cerns like those raised by Kenneth Smith before he was exe­cut­ed in Alabama in January. Mr. Smith also sur­vived an ini­tial exe­cu­tion attempt and argued that sub­ject­ing him to a sec­ond attempt would be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. While the United States Supreme Court did not agree to rule on his claim, inter­na­tion­al experts and human rights bod­ies expressed con­cern and alarm at the sec­ond exe­cu­tion attempt, char­ac­ter­iz­ing it as tor­ture. Another Idaho death-sen­tenced pris­on­er, Gerald Pizzuto, received a stay of exe­cu­tion in August 2023 while the court con­sid­ered his claim that the state vio­lates his Constitutional right against cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment by repeat­ed­ly sched­ul­ing exe­cu­tion dates while know­ing the state does not have the means to car­ry it out.

Josh Tewalt, Director of the Idaho Department of Correction, told press at a news con­fer­ence fol­low­ing the exe­cu­tion attempt that the exe­cu­tion team’s efforts to estab­lish an IV line were ​“con­sis­tent with IDOC pol­i­cy.” The state’s exe­cu­tion team, which con­sists entire­ly of vol­un­teers, is required by pro­to­col to have at least three years of med­ical expe­ri­ence. The iden­ti­ties, skills, and spe­cif­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions of the indi­vid­u­als on the med­ical team are pro­tect­ed from dis­clo­sure by a March 2022 secre­cy law, which also con­ceals from the pub­lic and the courts infor­ma­tion on the pro­duc­ers and sup­pli­ers of drugs used in Idaho exe­cu­tions. It is unknown whether the secre­cy law will pre­vent any pub­lic report describ­ing what went wrong in Mr. Creech’s executions.

Mr. Creech’s death war­rant required his exe­cu­tion be car­ried out by 11:59pm on February 28, 2024. After the fail­ure to exe­cute Mr. Creech in the morn­ing, his attor­neys filed a new request for a stay in fed­er­al court, say­ing that Idaho’s ​“bad­ly botched exe­cu­tion attempt” proves the state’s ​“inabil­i­ty to car­ry out a humane and con­sti­tu­tion­al exe­cu­tion.” In a state­ment fol­low­ing the botched exe­cu­tion attempt, The Federal Defender Services of Idaho (FDSI) said that they ​“are angered but not sur­prised that the State of Idaho botched” Mr. Creech’s exe­cu­tion. ​“This is what hap­pens when unknown indi­vid­u­als with unknown train­ing are assigned to car­ry out an execution…This is pre­cise­ly the kind of mishap we warned the State and the Courts could hap­pen when attempt­ing to exe­cute one of the country’s old­est death-row inmates in cir­cum­stances com­plete­ly shield­ed in secre­cy despite a well-known his­to­ry of get­ting drugs from shady sources,” FDSI added.

Mr. Tewalt told the press that the Idaho Department of Corrections does not ​“have an idea of time frame or next steps at this point.” Mr. Creech’s pre­vi­ous­ly filed peti­tions with the United States Supreme Court were denied. ​“Mr. Creech has iden­ti­fied a sub­stan­tial need for guid­ance from the Court on an issue of great nation­al impor­tance and he has brought a strong vehi­cle for it to do,” Mr. Creech’s attor­neys wrote in the most recent petition. 

In the last decade, an increas­ing num­ber of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies have restrict­ed the sales of their drugs to pris­ons, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for some states to access ade­quate drugs for lethal injec­tion. Prior to Idaho’s last exe­cu­tion in 2012, Mr. Tewalt, not yet the Director of IDOC, and a col­league flew to neigh­bor­ing Washington state with more than $10,000 to buy drugs for use in an exe­cu­tion from a phar­ma­cist. This trip only became pub­lic knowl­edge after University of Idaho pro­fes­sor Aliza Cover suc­cess­ful­ly won a law­suit seek­ing the infor­ma­tion under the state’s pub­lic records act. In March 2023, Gov. Brad Little also signed leg­is­la­tion autho­riz­ing the fir­ing squad as a method of exe­cu­tion. This law gives the Director of IDOC up to five days after a death war­rant is issued to deter­mine if lethal injec­tion is avail­able. As of February 2024, the state has made lit­tle progress in devel­op­ing a facil­i­ty suit­able for the fir­ing squad, pre­clud­ing the state from using this method of exe­cu­tion in the near future.