Idaho set to execute Thomas Eugene Creech, one of the longest-serving death row inmates in the US
Idaho set to execute Thomas Eugene Creech, one of the longest-serving death row inmates in the US
The hour of Thomas Eugene Creech’s death has been set. On Wednesday morning Idaho prison officials will have the 73-year-old brought into the state’s execution chamber at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution south of Boise.
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.
Dragging out these people's executions is cruel.
However you never want to kill an innocent person
Execution is cruel.
Think about knowing your death date. Feeling it approach day by day. You're out of appeals. You're definitely going to be killed and on a specific date at a specific time and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
That is torture.
I don't care how bad your crime was, no one deserves to be tortured. Or executed by the state.
Simple solution. Stop executions
Ah, so incarceration for life without parole. Making the death sentence drag on for the rest of their life... That's totally not dragging out their death at all...
How can you not be able to find a vein on a man who's strapped to a chair and immobile, for several hours?
Iv cannulation can be tricky at times even for those who do it often.
I'm curious what kind of training the "volunteers with medical training" have as well... If they were trained for this specific purpose then its unlikely they've been able to practice on real humans, and practicing on a mannequin or IV trainer arm is very different from sticking a real human. Usually where I am, people who need iv training practice starting them in day surgery units. I can't see a medical clinic agreeing to let someone from a prison come in and try to practice for the purpose of getting proficient at lethal injections.
Most health care practitioners have either oaths or a code of ethics that prohibits causing harm, hence why lethal injections are so often a mess.
Perhaps it's a sneaky protest
"convicted of five murders in three states and is suspected in several more."
and:
"originally sentenced to death for the shooting deaths of John Wayne Bradford and Edward Thomas Arnold."
"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."
"In addition to the Idaho murders, Creech has been convicted of killing both William Joseph Dean in Oregon and Vivian Grant Robinson in California in 1974. 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.
In 1973, Creech was tried for the killing of 70-year-old Paul Schrader in Tucson, Arizona, but was acquitted of the crime. Authorities still believe him to be responsible for Schrader’s death, and say that Creech provided information that led them to bodies of two people near Las Vegas and one person near Baggs, Wyoming."
I'm of the opinion that the death penalty is not punitive, and it's not retributive. It's a way of telling another human being "there is no 'correcting' what you have done."
It needs to be reserved for the most monstrous of crimes and, in this case, 5 undisputed murders plus possibly 5 more? Pull the plug on this guy already. He's outstayed his welcome.
I dream of a future where we don't end people's lives, no matter what they've done. I believe that using the death penalty as a way to scare people into behaving ignores the real reasons why people do bad things in the first place. I also think that there are some people who, because of the way their brain works, can't be stopped by fear of punishment.
Looking at what Jesus, Buddha, or great thinkers like Marcus Aurelius said, they all teach us to be kind and understand that everyone deserves respect, even those who might seem broken or lost. To me, it feels wrong to use someone as a warning to others because it forgets that every person has value.
This is just how I see things, based on what I believe and what matters to me. I know it's a big, complicated topic, and not everyone will see it the same way.
When I was 12 I hid under the couch while my Grandpa brutally murdered my grandma overnight. Between around 11:00 pm and about 4:00am He hit her with with the coat tree, threw her down the stairs, whipped her with his belt until she bled, took her outside and tied her up behind his car and dragged her up and down the road before finally drowning her in a 5 gallon bucket of water. I was 12, and I watched.
For 22 years I went and fought his parole, every 5 years from the time I was 17 until I was 34 I had to go look that monster in the eye.
He swore if he ever got out he'd put the rest of the family in the ground too.
For 22 years I lived in constant, overbearing, fear of him doing the same things to me, my mom, my dad, my brother, and my cousins, that he did to my grandma that night.
The BIGGEST disservice ever done to my family by the state of Ohio is letting that horrible man live for 22 years. He should have been gassed on day 1.
Is it really used as a warning though? I presume it's more like a statement of removing a constant danger from the population without keeping them permanently alone. To your point, if every person has value then you can't just lock up inveterate murderers with other prisoners and put those prisoners in potential mortal danger.
I'm not sure this is how the death penalty is used in practice since the appeals process is so long, but I'd be hard pressed to think of a punishment worse than perpetual solitude in a small concrete box until you naturally expire decades later with no hope of ever leaving.
I originally upvoted you, but then I took a moment to read your comment more closely.
It needs to be reserved for the most monstrous of crimes and, in this case, 5 undisputed murders plus possibly 5 more?
No. Being convicted of 5 murders does not mean 5 undisputed murders. The primary argument against the death penalty is based on how often we incarcerate innocent or even insufficiently proven guilty people and then the only recourse is letting them out, since we have no recourse after wrongfully executing someone. Portraying the 5 murders he was convicted of as "undisputed" wilfully ignores the single biggest problem with the death penalty.
Sure, but what does executing him accomplish?
It tells him "better luck next time."