US suspends execution after fatal IV catheter failed to insert
The state of Idaho (northwestern United States) on Wednesday suspended the execution of Thomas Creech, a serial killer who was convicted of five murders, when the medical team was unable to insert an intravenous catheter. Creech, a 73-year-old white man believed responsible for at least 11 murders, was scheduled to be executed at 10 a.m. local time (5 p.m. GMT) at the Idaho State Correctional Institute, south of Boise.
According to the protocol, he was to receive an injection with five grams of pentobarbital, a powerful sedative, but after more than 45 minutes trying to insert the probe, the medical team gave up executing him, according to authorities and testimonies. The prisoner was returned to his cell after the execution was suspended.
Idaho is one of the least active states in the country regarding the death penalty: since the United States reintroduced capital punishment in 1976, it has executed three people, the last 12 years ago.
Long criminal history
Creech has been in prison for 50 years, more than 40 on death row. The murder for which Idaho was going to execute Creech occurred in 1981, inside the prison, but the inmate had a very extensive criminal record.
He had initially been sentenced to death for the 1974 murders of John Wayne Bradford and Edward Thomas Arnold in Idaho, but that sentence was later commuted to a life sentence when the death penalty was briefly declared unconstitutional.
While serving his new life sentence, he beat David Dale Jensen to death in prison, another prisoner serving time for a car theft. In addition, he had also been convicted in the state of Oregon for the 1974 murder of William Joseph Dean and in California for that of Vivian Grant Robinson in the same year.
These are the five murders for which Creech was convicted throughout his life, but he admitted to nearly 40, although authorities are now skeptical that he is really responsible for all of them, since he made the confessions under duress.
The authorities, however, do believe him responsible for at least 11 murders. In Oregon, precisely, prosecutors decided to file another murder case against Creech – that of Sandra Jane Ramsamooj – in view of the convictions he already accumulated.
Executions by lethal injection have faced numerous problems in recent years, including the difficulty of medical teams in introducing intravenous tubes in elderly prisoners or those with health complications. For this reason, among others, Alabama tested nitrogen gas asphyxiation for the first time last month, a new method that other states have already begun to study.
This Wednesday afternoon the state of Texas plans to execute at 6:00 p.m. local time (00:00 Thursday GMT) another prisoner, the Latino Ivan Cantu, sentenced to death for the murders in 2000 of his cousin and his fiancée.