The hour of Thomas Eugene Creech’s death has been set
The hour of Thomas Eugene Creech’s death has been set, and it is rapidly approaching.
On Wednesday morning Idaho prison officials will ask the 73-year-old if he would like a mild sedative to help calm him before his execution at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution south of Boise. Then, at 10 a.m. local time, they will bring him into the execution chamber and strap him to a padded medical table.
Defense attorneys and the warden will check for any last-minute court orders that would halt the execution of Creech, who is one of the longest-serving death row inmates in the U.S.
Barring any legal stay, volunteers with medical training will insert a catheter into one of Creech’s veins. He’ll be given a chance to say his last words, and a spiritual advisor may pray with him. Then the state will inject a drug intended to kill the man who has been convicted of five murders in three states and is suspected in several more.
Creech has been imprisoned since 1974 and was originally sentenced to death for the shooting deaths of John Wayne Bradford and Edward Thomas Arnold. That sentence, however, was changed to life in prison after the state’s sentencing law was found unconstitutional.
Then, in 1983, he was sentenced to death for the murder of David Dale Jensen, who was 22, disabled and serving time for a car theft when Creech beat him to death at the Idaho State Penitentiary on May 13, 1981.
Jensen’s family members described him as a gentle soul who loved hunting and being outdoors during Creech’s clemency hearing last month. Jensen’s daughter was just 4 years old when he died, and she spoke about how painful it was to grow up without a father, piecing together everything she knows about her dad from other people’s descriptions and memories.
In court documents filed late last week, Idaho officials said Creech’s spiritual advisor would be allowed to stand next to Creech with a hand on his shoulder during the execution. The Episcopal bishop will also be able to silently pray over Creech but won’t be allowed to hold his hand or make any noise once the administration of the lethal injection chemical begins, according to the court document.
