BOISE, Idaho– An Idaho man scheduled to be executed at the end of this month is asking a federal court to suspend his lethal injection and order a new clemency hearing after the previous one led to a tie vote.
Thomas Eugene Creech is the longest-serving death row inmate in Idaho. He was already in prison after being convicted in 1974 of murdering two people in Valley County when he was sentenced to death in 1981 for beating a fellow inmate to death with a sock full of batteries.
Last month, the state parole board voted 3-3 on Creech’s request to commute his sentence to life without parole after one of its members recused himself from the case. Under state rules, a majority of the board must vote in favor of clemency before that recommendation is sent to the governor.
But even that is no guarantee. The state also allows the governor to override clemency recommendations, and Gov. Brad Little said last week that he “does not intend to take any action that would stop or delay Creech’s execution.”
“Thomas Creech is a convicted serial killer responsible for acts of extreme violence,” Little said in a statement, later continuing: “His lawful and just sentence must be carried out as ordered by the court. Justice has delayed long enough.”
During his clemency hearing, Ada County Deputy Prosecutor Jill Longhurst characterized Creech as a sociopath with no regard for human life. She noted his lengthy criminal record, which also includes murder convictions in Oregon and California. Once again, a murder charge in Oregon was dropped by prosecutors because he had already received four life sentences there.
At times Creech has claimed to have killed several more.
“The facts underlying this case could not be more chilling,” then-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in a 1993 opinion upholding an Idaho law on when to sentence defendants to death can be convicted. The ruling came after Creech appealed his sentence, arguing that the statute was unconstitutionally vague.
“Thomas Creech has admitted to killing or participating in the killing of at least 26 people,” O’Connor continued. “The bodies of 11 of his victims – who were shot, stabbed, beaten or strangled – have been recovered in seven states.”
Creech’s attorneys say the number of murders linked to him has been greatly exaggerated and that Creech, 73, has changed during his decades behind bars.
Creech has had a positive influence on younger inmates and went 28 years without committing a single disciplinary violation before being charged once in 2022 for a “misunderstanding over a card game,” attorney Jonah Horwitz of the Idaho Federal Defenders Office said during his clemency hearing.
Creech has received support for his commutation request from some seemingly unlikely sources, including a former prison nurse, a former prosecutor and the judge who sentenced him to death.
Judge Robert Newhouse told a clemency committee last year that it would make no sense to execute Creech after 40 years on death row. If he were to do that now, it would only be an act of revenge, he said in a petition.
In their federal appeal requesting a new clemency hearing, Creech’s attorneys say the absence of one board member from the decision put their client at an unfair disadvantage. Normally, an inmate would have to convince a simple majority to get a clemency recommendation, but because one person was missing, that became two-thirds of the board, his lawyers noted.
Either another board member should have stepped aside to avoid a tie vote or someone else should have been appointed to fill the seventh seat, they said.
Creech also has two appeals on other issues pending in the Idaho Supreme Court and has appealed another case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.