Thomas Eugene Creech has spent more than 50 years in Idaho custody, most of them on death row. He was convicted of five murders in three states. Two were house painters who picked him up while he was hitchhiking in Valley County, Idaho, in November 1974. Two more were men killed in Oregon and California the same year. The fifth was David Dale Jensen, a 23-year-old fellow prisoner with physical and mental disabilities, whom Creech beat to death at the Idaho State Correctional Institution in May 1981 while he was already serving life. The death sentence for Jensen's killing, first imposed in 1982 and reimposed in 1995, is the sentence Idaho has tried to carry out.
He has also been the subject of claims far larger than his record. At various times he told investigators he had killed 40 or more people, and in 1993 the U.S. Supreme Court recorded that he had admitted killing or taking part in the killing of at least 26, and that 11 bodies had been recovered in seven states. Prosecutors put the number of his victims at no fewer than 11. His lawyers say his counts were grossly exaggerated, and many of the early confessions were given under so-called truth serum drugs that have since been discredited, according to the Associated Press. A jury in Arizona acquitted him of the one other killing for which he stood trial.
On February 28, 2024, the Idaho Department of Correction tried to execute him by lethal injection. The medical team made eight attempts to set an intravenous line and could not, and the execution was called off after about an hour. Since then the case has passed through state and federal courts, a change in Idaho's execution law, and a new lawsuit. As of October 2026 he remains on death row.
The record of Creech's early years is thin, and much of it comes from his defenders and his prosecutors rather than from documents. The Associated Press describes him as an Ohio native. At his 1995 resentencing his older sister testified about mental illness in the family, childhood poverty, physical abuse and a serious fall, according to the Ninth Circuit's 2022 opinion. At his clemency hearing in January 2024 his lawyer, Jonah Horwitz of the federal defender's office, told the parole commission that Creech had suffered a concussion at 5 and had an abusive father, the Idaho Capital Sun reported.
Jim Harris, the former Ada County prosecutor who sought his death sentence in 1982, told the Boise station KIVI in 2019 that Creech lost his father at a very young age and that the loss may have shaped his later violence. Harris said Creech's criminal history began at 16 and that his first attempted killing was aimed at a male nurse he blamed for failing to get help for his father before he died. KIVI also cited reports in the Journal-News of Hamilton, Ohio, that Creech claimed to have drowned a friend in New Miami, Ohio, at 17, and to have killed five members of a motorcycle gang in Ohio in cult rituals. None of those claims was reported to have led to a charge.
KIVI further cited a 1986 United Press International report that Creech had been in San Francisco in 1965 and claimed to have killed a man there. That claim, too, was never charged.
The first killing for which Creech was tried did not end in a conviction. In late 1973 Paul C. Schrader, a 70-year-old retiree, was stabbed to death in a downtown Tucson motel. KIVI, citing the Tucson Daily Citizen of January 4, 1974, reported that Creech and the woman he had married in 1973 were both wanted in the case and that Creech was arrested in Beaver, Utah, and returned to Arizona. After hours of deliberation a jury acquitted him, at 23. The Associated Press reported in 2024 that authorities say they have no doubt he was responsible. The verdict stands, and he is not guilty of that killing in law.
In 1974 Creech was in Oregon. KIVI, citing UPI, reported that he spent time at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem and later worked on the maintenance staff of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Portland, where he also lived.
William Joseph Dean, 22, was shot and killed at that church, according to the Associated Press. KIVI reported that Dean's body was found in Creech's living quarters there and that Creech was convicted of the killing. The Associated Press, in a later account, reported that Creech was convicted of a 1974 killing in Oregon. Little else about Dean's life was reported.
The AP also reported that while on a weekend pass from the Oregon State Hospital in 1974, Creech killed Vivian Grant Robinson at Robinson's home in Sacramento, California, and that he was not convicted of that killing until 1980. The Idaho Statesman, describing the same record, refers to a conviction for killing a man in Northern California. The reports give no further detail about Robinson.
The Ninth Circuit, in its 2022 opinion, lists four murder convictions against Creech before 1981: two in 1976, one in 1979 and one in 1980. The two in 1976 are the Idaho convictions.
Authorities also believe Creech shot and killed Sandra Jane Ramsamooj at the grocery store in Salem, Oregon, where she worked, the AP reported. He was not convicted of her death.
In November 1974 Creech and his girlfriend were hitchhiking in Idaho, heading from Lewiston toward Donnelly in Valley County, according to KIVI. Two traveling house painters, Edward Thomas Arnold, 34, and John Wayne Bradford, 40, picked them up. Creech shot both men and left their bodies partly buried near Highway 55 outside Donnelly, KIVI reported. The Idaho Statesman gives the men's ages and their full names.
Coverage of the two men says little beyond their ages and their trade. At his January 2024 clemency hearing Creech gave no victim count beyond his five convictions, and in June 2024 he told the Statesman that he had killed Arnold and Bradford.
Creech was arrested in November 1974, the month of the killings, according to Courthouse News Service. His girlfriend cooperated with the authorities, the AP reported.
Judge J. Ray Durtschi moved the trial out of Valley County to Wallace, in northern Idaho, to find a jury that had not been exposed to publicity. "I moved him up to Wallace to try him where there had not been any publicity," he recalled in a recording quoted by KIVI. Creech was convicted of both murders. Durtschi sentenced him to death by hanging in March 1976, KIVI reported, and the judge also recalled that Creech had admitted to other killings.
That sentence did not last. After the U.S. Supreme Court barred automatic death sentences in 1976, Creech's sentence was converted to life in prison, according to the AP and the Statesman. KIVI dates the Idaho ruling striking down the state's mandatory death penalty to 1979. By 1981 he was serving two life sentences for first-degree murder, as the Ninth Circuit put it, at the Idaho State Correctional Institution south of Boise.
Harris, the former prosecutor, told KIVI that Creech was later given trusty status and worked as a janitor with access to several maximum-security sections. Harris and the Ada County sheriff of the time, Chuck Palmer, had both written to prison officials warning that Creech was dangerous, KIVI reported.
David Dale Jensen was 23 and from Pocatello, according to the Ninth Circuit and the Idaho Statesman; some AP accounts give his age as 22. He was in prison for car theft. He had survived a nearly fatal gunshot injury as a teenager that left him partly paralyzed, the AP reported. The U.S. Supreme Court described him as a nonviolent car thief who was physically handicapped: part of his brain had been removed before he went to prison, and he had a plastic plate in his skull. The Statesman reported that he was also blind in one eye.
His family described him to the AP as a gentle soul and a prankster who loved the outdoors. He had a daughter, who was 4 when he died. Decades later she told the parole commission that it was unfair that Creech was still alive.
On May 13, 1981, Creech killed Jensen on the maximum-security tier of the Idaho State Correctional Institution. Accounts of how the fight began differ, and Creech himself has given more than one.
KIVI, drawing on court documents, reported that the two men argued after Jensen dirtied a floor Creech had to clean, and that Jensen attacked Creech with a sock filled with batteries during Jensen's hour out of his cell. The sentencing judge later found that Jensen "without provocation, attacked him" and that Creech "was initially justified in protecting himself," as the U.S. Supreme Court recorded.
What happened next is not in dispute in the court record. Creech took the weapon from Jensen and beat him, and went on after Jensen could no longer defend himself. Jensen died in surgery the same day, according to the Ninth Circuit. At his plea hearing Creech testified that he had not meant to kill Jensen when the fight began, "But the second time, yes, I did intend to kill him." The judge found that "after the victim was helpless" Creech killed him.
At sentencing Creech gave a different account, according to the Supreme Court: that other prisoners had offered to pay him or help him escape if he killed Jensen, and that he had arranged for Jensen to attack him to create an excuse. He has also said he acted in self-defense. In a letter to KIVI in 2019 he wrote that he had killed Jensen, "But he attacked me." At his 2024 clemency hearing his lawyers said they were not arguing self-defense, the Idaho Capital Sun reported.
Creech was charged with first-degree murder in Ada County and represented by the Idaho Public Defender's office. He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment before Judge Robert Newhouse on June 19, 1981. He then wrote to the court saying he wanted to plead guilty, and Newhouse held a plea hearing on August 28, 1981.
His lawyer, Rolf Kehne, told the court he had had no advance notice and less than 15 minutes to talk with his client, and that the plea was against his advice, according to the Ninth Circuit's 1991 opinion. Creech confirmed that his attorney had advised him not to plead. At Kehne's insistence, Creech reserved the right to withdraw the plea if psychological evaluations found him incompetent. He pleaded guilty to first-degree murder.
In January 1982 Judge Newhouse sentenced Creech to death without a jury, as Idaho law then allowed. The judge relied on a presentence report that included psychiatric reports, records from Ohio and Oregon, and newspaper articles. He found five statutory aggravating circumstances, among them that Creech was already under a sentence for first-degree murder, that he had killed a fellow inmate while both were held at the prison, and that he had shown "utter disregard for human life." Newhouse described the killing as an intentional, calculated act showing excessive violent rage.
The Idaho Supreme Court vacated that sentence because the judge had not pronounced it in Creech's presence. In 1983 Newhouse read the death sentence again without holding a new hearing for mitigating evidence. The Idaho Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and sentence on May 23, 1983, rejecting the argument that the Constitution required a jury at sentencing. In 1985 it also upheld the refusal to let Creech withdraw his guilty plea. The Idaho Department of Correction's death row list gives January 1983 as the date of his sentence.
The case then went to the federal courts. A federal district court denied habeas relief in 1986. In 1991 the Ninth Circuit held that the "utter disregard" aggravating circumstance was unconstitutionally vague, and it also granted relief because Creech had not been allowed to present new mitigating evidence, such as his conduct in prison, when he was resentenced in 1983.
The state took the vagueness question to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Arave v. Creech, decided March 30, 1993, the Court ruled, in an opinion by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, that the "utter disregard" circumstance, as the Idaho Supreme Court had narrowed it to mean a "cold-blooded, pitiless slayer," met constitutional standards on its face. Justice Harry Blackmun dissented, joined by Justice John Paul Stevens. The Court reversed the Ninth Circuit in part but left in place its separate grant of a new sentencing hearing, and the case went back to the Ada County court. The Court's opinion is also the source of the figures most often repeated about Creech's claims: that he had admitted killing or taking part in killing at least 26 people, and that the bodies of 11 victims had been recovered in seven states.
Judge Newhouse held a five-day resentencing hearing in March and April 1995, with Kehne again representing Creech. Creech testified. His sister and her husband testified about his family and childhood. A clinical psychologist, Dr. Steven Brown, testified that Creech scored in the 96th percentile for psychopathic traits and that there was probably a biological contribution to his condition. The state called six witnesses about his conduct in prison and whether he posed a security risk.
Newhouse found mitigating facts: Creech was 44, an age at which violent acts are less common; he had earned a GED; he had cooperated with law enforcement; he was creative; his wife had been a good influence; and he might be biologically predisposed to violence. He found the same five aggravating circumstances as before and, this time, an express finding that Creech had attacked Jensen with specific intent to kill. On April 17, 1995, he sentenced Creech to death again. The Idaho Supreme Court affirmed in 1998. Roger Bourne, the prosecutor at the 1995 hearing, argued that if the death penalty did not fit Creech, nothing would, KIVI reported.
A federal habeas case begun in June 1999 brought a stay of an execution scheduled that year. In 2000 Creech filed a successive state petition, which was dismissed as untimely; the Idaho Supreme Court affirmed in 2002. A further state petition argued, under Ring v. Arizona, that a jury rather than a judge must find the facts that make a defendant eligible for death; it too was dismissed.
The federal case resumed and the district court denied all claims. In Creech v. Richardson, filed July 20, 2022, and amended February 6, 2023, a Ninth Circuit panel of Judges William A. Fletcher, Jay S. Bybee and Morgan Christen affirmed. It held that the Idaho Supreme Court had reasonably found no prejudice from his lawyers' work at the 1995 hearing, and that the Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Shinn v. Ramirez barred consideration of new evidence his federal lawyers had gathered. The U.S. Supreme Court denied review on October 10, 2023.
Creech's lawyers told the parole commission in 2024 that he had gone 28 years without a disciplinary offense apart from a 2022 dispute over a card game, which they called a misunderstanding. They also said death row prisoners in Idaho had spent 23 hours a day in isolation until 2018. Staff at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution described him to the AP as a generally well-behaved old-timer who wrote poems for staff members in times of support or condolence. "Some of our correctional officers have grown up with Tom Creech," said Josh Tewalt, then director of the Department of Correction.
He married in prison in 1998, the Idaho Statesman reported. His wife attended the execution attempt in February 2024. She died at 77 in late December, the Statesman reported in August 2025.
On October 12, 2023, an Ada County judge issued a death warrant setting his execution for November 8, 2023. Creech filed new petitions and sought clemency. On October 19 the court stayed the execution after the Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole agreed to hear his commutation request.
The hearing took place on January 19, 2024. Creech, then 73, asked for his sentence to be reduced to life without parole. Ada County Deputy Prosecutor Jill Longhurst called him a sociopath and "the most prolific serial killer in Idaho," and told the commissioners he had not changed, the Idaho Capital Sun reported. She said Jensen had been medically fragile and was beaten with the battery-filled sock and stomped to death.
Supporters included several former prison workers, a current corrections officer, a former state legislator, and Judge Newhouse, who had sentenced Creech to death and now opposed his execution, the Statesman reported. Jim Harris, the prosecutor who had sought the death sentence, also opposed it. Gary Hartgrove, a retired deputy warden, told the commission that Creech was old, in poor health and a low security threat, and that staff would suffer if he were executed. His wife said in a recorded statement that he was now "the person that he was meant to be to begin with." Kathy Niecko, a former nurse at the maximum-security prison, said he had shown her more gratitude than any other inmate.
Creech apologized. "It was wrong. I wish I could go back and change it," he said. Asked how many people he had killed, he said he did not know for sure: "I got so mixed up with lying and telling law enforcement things that I didn't do." Jensen's daughter, younger sister and two nieces spoke last and urged the commission to deny clemency, describing "generational torment and heartache."
Longhurst also told the commission that Creech was responsible for the 1974 killing of Daniel A. Walker in San Bernardino County, California, and that he had "got away with" it. She showed an image of a white sock bearing what appeared to be Creech's name in marker, which his lawyers said had never been produced before and which suggested the weapon had been his own sock, the Lewiston Tribune reported.
One of the seven commissioners, Patrick McDonald, recused himself. On January 29, 2024, the remaining six split 3 to 3, and a tie meant no recommendation. Without one, the governor could not commute the sentence.
The three commissioners who favored commutation wrote that their decision rested on the time that had passed, the views of the sentencing judge and a former deputy prosecutor, and the change in law that now requires juries to decide death sentences. They wrote that their vote reflected no doubt about his guilt or about the nature of his crime. The three who opposed it cited the "coldblooded nature" of Jensen's murder, the number of people Creech had killed, his evasiveness about his other crimes and their view that he was not capable of true remorse. If the sentence could not be upheld in this case, they wrote, it would "mean nothing in the state of Idaho."
Governor Brad Little said he had "zero intention of taking any action that would halt or delay" the execution. On January 30, 2024, the Ada County court signed a new warrant for February 28.
On February 9, 2024, the Idaho Supreme Court rejected two appeals as untimely: one arguing that his sentencing lawyers had failed to present his childhood abuse and head injuries, and one arguing that a judge-imposed death sentence now violated evolving standards of decency.
In federal court Creech's lawyers challenged the clemency hearing itself. They argued that prosecutors had given no notice of the Walker accusation or the sock image, and that the Walker material was false. Daniel Walker's younger brother later wrote in support of Creech's request for a new hearing. "The cold case wasn't solved," he said, according to the Statesman. U.S. District Judge Amanda Brailsford denied the motions on February 23. On February 24 the same Ninth Circuit panel that had decided Creech v. Richardson affirmed, finding no rule requiring advance notice of evidence at a commutation hearing and holding that the sock image had been offered to rebut Creech's statement that the weapon was never his, Courthouse News Service reported. A separate challenge over the source of the state's pentobarbital also failed. The state had bought the drug the previous fall for $50,000 and declined to name the supplier, the Statesman reported. On the morning of February 28, Justice Elena Kagan denied a stay.
The night before, Creech ate a final meal with his wife. On the morning of February 28 he met his religious adviser and was given a sedative, the Statesman reported. About two dozen protesters gathered outside the prison near Kuna.
He was wheeled into the execution chamber at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution at 10 a.m. Six state officials, among them Attorney General Raul Labrador, and four media representatives watched. The execution team, all volunteers, wore face coverings. Three medical team members tried eight times to set an IV line: twice in the right arm, once in the right hand, once in the left arm and four times in the lower left leg, each attempt taking four to six minutes, according to the Statesman; the AP reported attempts in his arms, legs, hands and feet. Some veins could not be reached, and with others the team doubted their quality. At one point a team member left to get more supplies.
Media witnesses said the attempt was called off at 10:58 a.m. Around 11 a.m., the department said, Tewalt consulted the medical team leader and determined that the team could not establish a line. The warden then spoke quietly to Creech for several minutes, squeezing his arm. Creech appeared to mouth "I love you" toward the witness room. He was taken back to his cell, and the death warrant expired at the end of the day. No lethal drugs were given.
Governor Little said the department "did the right thing" by stopping. Labrador said justice had been delayed again. Deborah A. Czuba of Federal Defender Services of Idaho called it a botched execution: "This is what happens when unknown individuals with unknown training are assigned to carry out an execution."
After the failed attempt the Department of Correction rewrote its protocol to let the team use a central venous line, through large veins in the neck, groin, chest or upper arm, if a peripheral line could not be placed, the AP reported. Crews renovated F Block at the maximum-security prison to create a separate preparation room where the line would be set before the prisoner was moved to the chamber; witnesses would see the room by live audio and video. A spokesperson estimated that a secure firing squad facility, an option the Legislature had added in 2023, would cost $952,589; the renovations did not include it, the Idaho Capital Sun reported.
In court, Creech argued that any second attempt would be cruel and unusual punishment and would violate the ban on double jeopardy. A state district court dismissed his petition on September 5, 2024. The Ninth Circuit ruled on October 16, 2024, that Judge Brailsford should have recused herself from his clemency lawsuit because of her friendship with the Ada County prosecutor, Jan Bennetts, and sent the case back for reassignment. That same day the state served Creech with a new death warrant, setting his execution for November 13, 2024. It was the 13th death warrant issued against him, the Statesman reported.
On November 5, 2024, the Idaho Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal of his petition. Relying on a 1947 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, it held that a second attempt did not on these facts amount to cruel and unusual punishment, and that the first attempt had not imposed any punishment beyond what the legislature allowed. The court wrote that Creech had not alleged that the state would inflict unnecessary pain during an execution using a central line.
The same day, in federal court, Senior U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow of Arizona, sitting because Idaho's federal judges had potential conflicts, said he would stay the execution while he considered the same constitutional claims. "I'm not going to rush justice in a case like this," he said. He issued the stay, the warrant expired, and Creech was returned to his previous housing in J Block. "Execution preparations have been suspended," a department spokesperson said.
On March 12, 2025, Governor Little signed House Bill 37, making the firing squad Idaho's primary method of execution from July 1, 2026. The Idaho Capital Sun noted that the state's last scheduled execution, Creech's, had been called off after officials failed to establish an IV line.
In April 2025 a federal injunction, arising from a lawsuit by three news organizations seeking access to the rooms where lethal injection drugs are prepared and given, barred executions in Idaho. The state suspended executions while it retrofitted the execution chamber, the Statesman reported.
In August 2025 Judge Snow ruled against Creech on his claim that a second attempt would be cruel and unusual and lifted the stay; Creech's lawyers asked him to restore it while they appealed to the Ninth Circuit. Snow also dismissed Creech's lawsuit over the clemency hearing, including the claim that prosecutors had falsely tied him to the Walker killing, and dismissed a challenge to the method of execution because it was unclear whether, or how, the state would try again. He wrote that the method challenge could return if the state sought a new warrant. A court filing cited a doctor's diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder after the failed execution, the Statesman reported. In 2024 Creech had told the paper: "I'm very remorseful, and not that person I was 30 years ago."
The firing squad law took effect on July 1, 2026. In the second week of July, Creech and Gerald Pizzuto, described as the next two Idaho prisoners in line for execution, sued Department of Correction Director Bree Derrick in state district court. They claim that her approval of the new execution procedures was arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion, and they list 13 disputed policies, among them the qualifications of the team, limits on witnesses and lawyers, and the director's power to change the rules at will. They do not challenge the constitutionality of the firing squad itself, Local News 8 reported. The Statesman reported that Creech, then 75, had a large abdominal aneurysm, edema and Type 2 diabetes.
On October 1, 2026, the Boise station KBOI reported that Creech remained on Idaho's death row, one of eight people under sentence of death in the state, and that the ACLU of Idaho had asked the state to let him die in prison. The Department of Correction's death row page lists him as inmate 14984, sentenced in January 1983 for the beating death of an inmate in Ada County. No new death warrant or execution date had been reported, and the outcome of his federal appeal and of the July 2026 lawsuit had not been reported.
The following are claims or attributions, not convictions.
His own counts. Creech has claimed at different times to have killed 40, 42 or as many as 50 people. At trial, the Statesman reported, he testified that he had killed 42 people by 24, not counting Arnold and Bradford. The Supreme Court recorded in 1993 that he had admitted killing or taking part in at least 26 killings. His lawyers say he greatly exaggerated, and the AP reported that many early confessions were given under truth serum drugs now discredited. In January 2024 he told the parole commission he did not know the number.
The prosecutors' count. Ada County prosecutors say he had at least 11 victims, and the Supreme Court recorded that 11 bodies had been recovered in seven states. The AP reported that after his arrest he 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. Those deaths are not among his convictions.
Paul Schrader, Tucson, 1973. A jury acquitted him. Authorities told the AP they believe he was responsible. In law he is not guilty.
Sandra Jane Ramsamooj, Salem, Oregon, 1974. Authorities believe he shot her, the AP reported. He was never convicted.
Daniel A. Walker, San Bernardino County, California, October 1974. Ada County prosecutors told the parole commission in 2024 that Creech was responsible and called the case solved; the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office said only that it had reopened the case and worked with Ada County to check details against Creech's past statements. Creech denies it, he has never been charged, and the victim's brother has said the case was not solved.
Ohio and San Francisco. Reports cited by KIVI say he claimed to have drowned a friend at 17, killed five members of a motorcycle gang in cult rituals, and killed a man in San Francisco in 1965. No charge followed.
A California mine shaft. Jim Harris told KIVI that Creech led investigators to a mine shaft in California containing a large number of skeletons. No identifications or charges from that search were reported.
The killing of Jensen. The court accepted that Jensen struck first and that Creech was at first justified in defending himself, and found that he then killed Jensen after Jensen was helpless. Creech has called it self-defense and has also described it as a killing arranged for pay. The question of who owned the sock was raised again at the 2024 clemency hearing.
1973: Creech marries; Paul Schrader, 70, is stabbed to death in Tucson. Creech is arrested in Utah, tried in Arizona and acquitted.
1974: In Oregon he spends time at the Oregon State Hospital and works at a Portland church, where William Joseph Dean, 22, is shot. Vivian Grant Robinson is killed in Sacramento.
November 1974: Edward Thomas Arnold, 34, and John Wayne Bradford, 40, are shot in Valley County, Idaho. Creech is arrested the same month.
1975: Trial in Wallace, Idaho, before Judge J. Ray Durtschi.
March 1976: Sentenced to death by hanging for the Valley County murders; later reduced to life.
1979 and 1980: Further murder convictions (Oregon and California).
May 13, 1981: Beats David Dale Jensen, 23, to death at the Idaho State Correctional Institution.
August 28, 1981: Pleads guilty to first-degree murder against his lawyer's advice.
January 1982: Sentenced to death by Judge Robert Newhouse.
1983: Sentence reimposed; Idaho Supreme Court affirms on May 23.
1991: Ninth Circuit grants habeas relief on the sentence.
March 30, 1993: Arave v. Creech; the Supreme Court upholds the "utter disregard" circumstance but leaves resentencing in place.
April 17, 1995: Resentenced to death by Judge Newhouse.
1998: Marries in prison; Idaho Supreme Court affirms the 1995 sentence.
June 14, 1999: Federal court stays a scheduled execution.
July 20, 2022: Ninth Circuit affirms denial of habeas relief (amended February 6, 2023).
October 10, 2023: U.S. Supreme Court denies review.
October 12, 2023: Death warrant issued for November 8, 2023.
January 19, 2024: Clemency hearing.
January 29, 2024: Commission splits 3 to 3; clemency denied.
February 9, 2024: Idaho Supreme Court rejects two appeals.
February 28, 2024: Execution attempt halted after eight failed attempts to set an IV line.
October 16, 2024: Ninth Circuit orders his clemency lawsuit reassigned; new death warrant for November 13.
November 5, 2024: Idaho Supreme Court rejects his challenge to a second attempt; Judge Snow says he will stay the execution.
March 12, 2025: Firing squad made Idaho's primary method, effective July 1, 2026.
August 2025: Judge Snow rules against him and dismisses two related suits; appeal to the Ninth Circuit.
July 2026: Creech and Gerald Pizzuto sue over the new firing squad procedures.
October 1, 2026: Reported still on Idaho's death row.