Judge Orders Hearing for Idaho Prisoner Who Faced 5 Execution Dates, Claims of Repeated ​‘Psychological Torture’

Idaho U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill has ruled in favor of death row pris­on­er Gerald Pizzuto, indef­i­nite­ly paus­ing his March 2023 exe­cu­tion date, and grant­i­ng him a hear­ing in his claim that the state of Idaho 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. ​“As Pizzuto describes it,” Judge Winmill wrote, ​“defen­dants’ repeat­ed resched­ul­ing of his exe­cu­tion is like dry fir­ing in a mock exe­cu­tion or a game of Russian roulette… With each new death war­rant comes anoth­er spin of the revolver’s cylin­der, restart­ing the 30-day count­down until the trig­ger pulls. Not know­ing whether a round is cham­bered, Pizzuto must relive his last days in a delir­i­um of uncer­tain­ty until the click sounds and the cylin­der spins again.”

Mr. Pizzuto, who has been on death row since 1986, has faced five exe­cu­tion dates dur­ing his 37 years behind bars, three of which have been set dur­ing the past two years. Despite being under hos­pice care for the last three years with ter­mi­nal blad­der can­cer, the state says it intends to exe­cute Mr. Pizzuto. According to Attorney General Raúl Labrador, ​“Idaho law is clear: Those who com­mit the most egre­gious crimes deserve the ulti­mate pun­ish­ment… Pizzuto was sen­tenced to death. We fol­lowed the law and obtained a new death war­rant.” AG Labrador’s most recent effort to exe­cute Mr. Pizzuto came in February 2023, when he secured a death war­rant for the fol­low­ing month. The same day that AG Labrador announced his inten­tion to obtain a death war­rant for Mr. Pizzuto, Mr. Pizzuto’s attor­neys filed a law­suit claim­ing that ​“the state had oper­at­ed in bad faith by obtain­ing death war­rants while know­ing it lacked the lethal injec­tion drugs required under Idaho law to exe­cute [their] client.”

AG Labrador request­ed that the court dis­miss Mr. Pizzuto’s claim that the repeat­ed resched­ul­ing of his exe­cu­tion vio­lat­ed his Eighth Amendment rights, but Judge Winmill dis­missed the AG’s motion. Judge Winmill also reject­ed Mr. Pizzuto’s claim that his due process rights were vio­lat­ed under the 14^th Amendment but found Mr. Pizzuto’s claims of men­tal anguish and ​“psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ture” were ​“plau­si­ble,” which is the legal thresh­old required for a hearing.

Having spent near­ly four decades on death row, Mr. Pizzuto’s attor­neys argue that Idaho’s repeat­ed sched­ul­ing of exe­cu­tions ​“does not fall with­in [US] society’s stan­dards for a con­sti­tu­tion­al exe­cu­tion. The set­ting of mul­ti­ple exe­cu­tion dates has been psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly trau­ma­tiz­ing to [him].” Many experts in the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sphere believe the long peri­ods of iso­la­tion dur­ing time spent on death row can lead to sui­ci­dal­i­ty, delu­sion, and insan­i­ty. This con­cept, ​‘death row phe­nom­e­non,’ occurs when long-term iso­la­tion and uncer­tain out­comes begin to have psy­cho­log­i­cal impli­ca­tions. For those liv­ing on death row, there is a dichoto­my to their dai­ly life: cer­tain­ty and uncer­tain­ty. As Reprieve describes, there is ​“the cer­tain­ty and mount­ing ten­sions that exe­cu­tion is an inevitabil­i­ty that looms ever clos­er, but uncer­tain­ty about exact­ly when it will hap­pen, and how long the lengthi­ly legal process, with its many delays and improb­a­bil­i­ties, will leave the pris­on­er in this state.” 

In a notable rul­ing from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued in 2018, the Commission deter­mined that in the case of Russell Bucklew, a death-sen­tenced pris­on­er in Missouri, the United States had vio­lat­ed Bucklew’s human rights grant­ed by the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man by keep­ing him on death row for more than 20 years. In its deci­sion, the Commission wrote:

Russell Bucklew has been deprived of his lib­er­ty on death row from 1997 to the date of the present report, i.e., more than 20 years. The Commission notes that the time spent by Russell Bucklew on death row great­ly exceeds the length of time that oth­er inter­na­tion­al and domes­tic courts have char­ac­ter­ized as cru­el, inhu­man, and degrad­ing treat­ment. The very fact of spend­ing 20 years on death row is, by any account, exces­sive and inhu­man. Consequently, the United States is respon­si­ble for vio­lat­ing, to the detri­ment of Russell Bucklew, the right to humane treat­ment and not to receive cru­el, infa­mous, or unusu­al pun­ish­ment estab­lished in Article XXVI of the American Declaration. 

The United States Supreme Court has not direct­ly addressed a chal­lenge to the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the extend­ed time most pris­on­ers spend on death row, though for­mer Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer pre­vi­ous­ly raised con­cerns about the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of pro­longed delays. In a 1995 response to a denial of cer­tio­rari, Justice Stevens ques­tioned whether the two prin­ci­ple jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for the death penal­ty, deter­rence and ret­ri­bu­tion, retained ​“any force” after a sev­en­teen year delay on death row. Joining Justice Stevens, Justice Breyer wrote that this issue is ​“an impor­tant unde­cid­ed one,” but nei­ther Justice dis­sent­ed from the Courts deci­sion to decline hear­ing the case. Later in his tenure on the Court, how­ev­er, Justice Breyer not­ed the ten­sion between avoid­ing lengthy delays with­out cur­tail­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al guar­an­tees. In Bucklew v. Precythe, Justice Breyer’s dis­sent notes that undue delays in death penal­ty cas­es ​“exac­er­bate the suf­fer­ing that accom­pa­nies an exe­cu­tion itself,” and can ​“aggra­vate the cru­el­ty of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment” by sub­ject­ing the offend­er to years in soli­tary con­fine­ment. He con­tin­ues that delays also ​“under­mine [cap­i­tal punishment’s] jurispru­den­tial ratio­nale” by reduc­ing its deter­rent effect and ret­ribu­tive val­ue. Justice Breyer con­cludes that ​“it may be that there is no way to exe­cute a pris­on­er quick­ly while afford­ing him the pro­tec­tion that our Constitution guar­an­tees to those who have been sin­gled out for our law’s most severe sanction.”