Idaho delays execution of Thomas Eugene Creech after 'badly botched' lethal injection attempts

Officials in Idaho failed to execute one of the nation's longest-serving death row inmates Wednesday after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a last-minute petition to have his execution put on hold.

Thomas Eugene Creech was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Wednesday, according to the Idaho Department of Correction, in what would have been the state's first execution in 12 years. Creech, 73, has been convicted of five murders in three states and landed on death row after killing a fellow prisoner in 1981.

But after consulting with the medical team leader, department director Josh Tewalt "determined the medical team could not establish an IV line, rendering the execution unable to proceed," according to a statement from the Department of Correction. As a result, the death warrant issued for Creech will expire and state officials will consider next steps, the statement said.

The failed execution comes after Creech's attorneys filed several late appeals in an attempt to halt the execution or convert his sentence to life without release, but lower court judges found no grounds for leniency. Creech's attorneys filed a petition to the Supreme Court on Monday asking to stay the execution and claiming his due process rights were violated when prosecutors lied during his clemency hearing. His application for a stay of execution was denied Wednesday, according to court documents.

Creech’s attorneys immediately filed a new motion for a stay in U.S. District Court, saying “Given the badly botched execution attempt this morning, which proves IDOC’s inability to carry out a humane and constitutional execution, undersigned counsel preemptively seek an emergency stay of execution to prevent any further attempts today.”

Thomas Eugene Creech convicted in multiple killings, suspected in others

Creech was arrested in 1974 after he fatally shot Thomas Arnold and John Bradford, two painters who had picked up him and his girlfriend while they were hitchhiking in Idaho.

That same year, he killed Vivian Grant Robinson at her home in Sacramento, California, a crime he confessed to while in custody in Idaho and was convicted of in 1980. Creech also shot and killed 22-year-old William Joseph Dean in 1974 while he was living in Portland, Oregon, and doing maintenance work at a church. He was also charged with killing Sandra Jane Ramsamooj in Oregon that year, but the charge was later dropped in light of his other murder sentences.

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It's not clear how many people Creech killed before he was imprisoned in 1974 in Idaho. He claimed at one point to have killed as many as 50 people, but official estimates vary, and authorities tend to focus on 11 deaths.

Creech provided information that led police to the bodies of Gordon Lee Stanton and Charles Thomas Miller near Las Vegas, and of Rick Stewart McKenzie, 22, near Baggs, Wyoming. Creech was also tried in the murder of 70-year-old Paul Schrader in Tucson, Arizona, in 1973, but was acquitted.

Creech was initially sentenced to death for killing the painters in Idaho, but his sentence was converted to life in prison in 1976 after the U.S. Supreme Court barred automatic death sentences. In 1981, Creech killed David Jensen, a man who was serving time for car theft, with a battery-filled sock and was later placed back on death row.

Contributing: The Associated Press