Death warrant signed for longest-serving Idaho death row inmate for November execution

An Ada County judge issued a death warrant Thursday afternoon for Thomas Creech, the state’s longest-serving death row inmate, setting his execution for next month.

Creech, 73, has spent roughly 44 years on death row after multiple murder convictions, the most recent after his guilty plea for killing another inmate in May 1981.

Judge Jason D. Scott of Idaho’s 4th Judicial District signed the death warrant that scheduled Creech to be put to death on Nov. 8, according to a copy of the document obtained by the Idaho Statesman from the Idaho attorney general’s office.

After passage of a new law earlier this year, the state permits executions by lethal injection, with a firing squad serving as the backup method. However, the Idaho Department of Correction said in a Thursday evening news release that prison officials have secured the drugs needed to carry out a lethal injection but provided no additional details.

Besides providing a copy of the death warrant, the attorney general’s office declined to comment.

Creech’s attorneys with the Federal Defender Services of Idaho said they were disappointed in the state’s decision to seek a death warrant for their client.

“The state continues to be focused on rushed retribution at all costs and by any means necessary, rather than careful consideration of the propriety of execution,” Deborah A. Czuba, supervising attorney of the nonprofit’s unit that oversees death penalty cases, said in a statement. “We will be doing everything we can to fight for Mr. Creech’s life, including challenging the quality of the drugs and execution by lethal injection.”

On Friday, Creech’s attorneys filed a petition for commutation with the state parole board in hopes of receiving a clemency hearing to consider reducing his death sentence to life in prison without parole. Among the supporters of Creech’s application are retired Judge Robert Newhouse of Idaho’s 4th Judicial District, who originally sentenced Creech to death.

Gov. Brad Little, who signed the firing squad law in March, previously overruled the parole board’s recommendation to reduce the sentence of death row inmate Gerald Pizzuto to life in prison. A spokesperson for Little did not respond to Statesman requests for comment.

Creech has been incarcerated in Idaho following the murders of two men, Edward T. Arnold, 34, and John W. Bradsford, 40, in Valley County in November 1974. A judge sentenced Creech to death, but his sentence was later commuted to life in prison after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled death sentences must be determined by a jury.

Creech, however, later pleaded guilty to first-degree murder after beating to death fellow inmate David Dale Jensen in 1981 while they were housed in maximum security prison. A jury sentenced Creech to death, and he was returned to death row later that year.

After Creech’s 1974 conviction in Idaho, he also pleaded guilty in 1979 to murdering William Joseph Dean in Oregon in 1974, but his sentence in Idaho superseded the later conviction in the neighboring state.

Idaho has not put an inmate to death since July 2012, when it executed convicted murderer Richard Leavitt by lethal injection.

The state has attempted to execute Pizzuto, a convicted double-murderer, three times since 2021, most recently in March. Behind only Creech, Pizzuto, 67, is the second-longest tenured inmate on Idaho’s death row, serving there since 1986. But state prison officials have been unable to put Pizzuto to death in part because they could not obtain the drugs needed to perform a lethal injection according to state guidelines.