The State of Idaho has issued a death warrant for the execution of convicted murderer Thomas Eugene Creech. The execution is scheduled for Nov. 8, 2023 by lethal injection.
The Idaho Department of Correction said in a news release it has secured the chemicals necessary for the lethal injection.
Creech, now 73 years old, was sentenced to death for a 1974 double murder in Valley County. That death sentence was changed to two life sentences when the state’s death penalty mandate for first degree murder was ruled unconstitutional in 1979.
While incarcerated, Creech killed a fellow inmate and was subsequently sentenced to death again. Creech also claimed that he’d murdered dozens of others.
He’s been on death row in Idaho for more than 40 years, but his execution was blocked as multiple appeals in state and federal court followed his resentencing in 1995. In February, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld previous court rulings affirming his death sentence.
According to the death warrant filed Thursday by the state, the U.S. Supreme Court this week denied to intervene in Creech’s death sentence, which his legal team had requested following the Ninth Circuit's decision.
"Given the shady pharmacies that the State has obtained the lethal drugs from for the past two Idaho executions, the State’s history of seeking mock death warrants without any means to carry them out, and the State’s misleading conduct around its readiness for an execution, we remain highly concerned about the measures the State resorted to this time to find a drug supplier," wrote Deborah Czuba, Supervising Attorney for the Capital Habeas Unit of Federal Defender Services of Idaho, in a statement.
She indicated a legal challenge over the quality of drugs the state will use in the lethal injection is likely, and they would seek clemency to commute the death sentence to life without parole.
Attempts to obtain lethal injection drugs for another death row inmate in 2022 were unsuccessful. Idaho's last execution happened in 2012.
A spokesperson for the State Department of Corrections declined to comment beyond the press release.
This story has been updated.
