Saying It Can’t Obtain Lethal-Injection Drugs, Idaho Calls Off December Execution of Gerald Pizzuto

Idaho has called off the sched­uled December 15, 2022 exe­cu­tion of ter­mi­nal­ly death-row pris­on­er Gerald Pizzuto, Jr. (pic­tured), say­ing it has not been able to obtain the drugs it needs to put him to death. Instead, pros­e­cu­tors said, the state would allow the death war­rant to expire.

Pizzuto has been in hos­pice care con­fined to a wheel­chair, suf­fer­ing from late-stage blad­der can­cer, chron­ic heart and coro­nary artery dis­ease, coro­nary obstruc­tive pul­monary dis­ease (COPD), and Type 2 dia­betes with relat­ed nerve dam­age to his legs and feet. He has had two heart attacks and has had four stents implant­ed around his heart. 

The Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole vot­ed 4 – 3 on December 30, 2021 to rec­om­mend clemen­cy for Pizzuto. However, one day lat­er, Governor Brad Little reject­ed the rec­om­men­da­tion, lead­ing to a legal bat­tle over whether he had con­sti­tu­tion­al author­i­ty to do so. An Idaho tri­al court ruled on February 4, 2022 that he did not, and vacat­ed Pizzuto’s death sen­tence. But the Idaho Supreme Court reversed that rul­ing and rein­stat­ed the sen­tence on August 23. Prosecutors then sought and obtained a new death war­rant, set­ting Pizzuto’s exe­cu­tion for December 15.

In a two-sen­tence notice filed November 30 in the Idaho fed­er­al dis­trict court, Idaho Deputy Attorney General L. LaMont Anderson wrote that ​“today, November 30, 2022, the Director for the Idaho Department of Correction (‘IDOC’) noti­fied the Board of Correction, the Governor’s Office, and the Idaho Attorney General’s Office that IDOC does not have the nec­es­sary chem­i­cals to car­ry out the exe­cu­tion of Petitioner Gerald Ross Pizzuto, Jr., on December 15, 2022. Execution prepa­ra­tion by IDOC will cease and the death war­rant will be allowed to expire.”

The mem­o­ran­dum from IDOC Director Josh Tewalt said that, after receiv­ing Pizzuto’s death war­rant on November 16, he let oth­er state offi­cials know that IDOC was hav­ing ​“dif­fi­cul­ties secur­ing the chem­i­cals nec­es­sary to car­ry out the execution.”

“Our efforts to obtain the nec­es­sary chem­i­cals have been unsuc­cess­ful to date,” Tewalt said. ​“While our efforts to secure chem­i­cals remain ongo­ing, I have no rea­son to believe our sta­tus will change pri­or to the sched­uled exe­cu­tion on December 15, 2022. In my pro­fes­sion­al judge­ment, I believe it is in the best inter­est of jus­tice to allow the death war­rant to expire and stand down our execution preparation.”

Pizzuto’s lawyer, assis­tant fed­er­al defend­er Deb Czuba, expressed relief that the exe­cu­tion would not go for­ward, but slammed Idaho pros­e­cu­tors for seek­ing a death war­rant they lacked the means to exe­cute. ​“The State’s deci­sion to get a death war­rant while being unpre­pared for an exe­cu­tion led to a tremen­dous amount of unnec­es­sary and cost­ly lit­i­ga­tion, all at tax­pay­er expense,” she said in a statement. 

Czuba said that Idaho should ​“like almost every oth­er death-penal­ty state in the coun­try, announce in advance what drugs it will use in exe­cu­tions so that seri­ous con­sti­tu­tion­al claims can be fair­ly resolved by the courts. Transparency in this process is far prefer­able to leav­ing the pub­lic and the courts in the dark and forc­ing dif­fi­cult and com­pli­cat­ed issues to be decid­ed with­out any care or delib­er­a­tion,” she said.

Idaho has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in more than ten years. Its most recent exe­cu­tions have raised seri­ous ques­tions about both the com­pound­ing phar­ma­cy that pro­vid­ed the drugs and the state’s con­duct in obtaining them.