Idaho death row inmate Thomas Creech reflects on failed execution

"When they mapped my veins a couple nights before and seen exactly where my veins were at – I watched them map it – I thought, 'man I'm gone,'" Creech told KTVB.

BOISE, Idaho — Three and a half months ago, Thomas Eugene Creech narrowly escaped death inside the execution chamber at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution.

"When they mapped my veins a couple nights before and seen exactly where my veins were at – I watched them map it – I thought, 'man I'm gone,'" Creech said.

Idaho's longest-serving death row inmate was supposed to be executed in February after a death warrant was signed. But, after eight attempts, an Idaho Department of Correction medical team was unable to establish an IV line to carry out the lethal injection.

Creech and his wife recently reached out to KTVB's Morgan Romero. He wanted to finally share why he believes he dodged the state-sponsored execution and what it was like.

The 73-year-old also said he wants people to see he's a changed man.

Around 10 a.m. on Feb. 28, Creech expected to take his final breath. After being in prison a half century, Creech said he "fully believed I was gonna die," and had "convinced myself that was it."

"They came in to the death cell and handcuffed me and strapped me to the board. The execution team, they call it the strap down team, they put me on the gurney and wheeled me in through the execution room," Creech said. "Then once they had me in there, they started adjusting my hands and legs to strap me down, and then the warden told them to go ahead and proceed with the execution. I looked over to the right and saw my wife sitting there and she had the most devastating, horrible, terrorized look on her face that I had ever seen in my life. It made me sick to my stomach, it was horrible."

Creech's wife, Leanne, was crying while sitting next to his priest.

His son, who Creech said looked man, also was there.

"They started in my right arm, up by my elbow and that was the first place that they poked me," Creech said. "I could feel it. It was like a sting. The part that hurt was when they moved the needle around trying to get the vein to accept it. Then they kept it moving down my arms and feet several times."

Creech remembers a total of 10 attempts, but the Idaho Department of Correction said it tried – and failed – eight times to establish an IV line where they would inject pentobarbital into Creech's veins.

"I don't know if it was wishful thinking or I actually saw, but I thought I saw angels standing on each side of my bed," Creech said. "I think I started crying. I pointed up to the sky and told my wife I was sorry."

Creech told KTVB his veins collapsed, meaning the veins' walls squeezed shut, preventing blood from flowing through.

Just under an hour later, at 10:58 a.m., IDOC leaders announced they were halting the execution.

"What they encountered in some instances was an access issue, but in others where they could establish access, they were unable – it was a vein quality issue that made them not confident in their ability to administer chemicals through the IV site once established," IDOC Director Josh Tewalt said in a news conference.

IDOC Director Josh Tewalt addresses the media after the planned execution of Thomas Eugene Creech was called off, Feb. 28, 2024, in Kuna, Idaho.

"My thought was, 'wow, this is a divine intervention.' Only thing I could think of, otherwise I'd be dead," Creech said. "I believe it was god almighty that had his hand in it that stopped it. I don't want to believe anything else."

IDOC's medical team, escort team and incident command staff trained for and rehearsed his execution multiple times.

Creech said they never practiced on him.

The Idaho Department of Correction requires medical team members taking part in an execution to place IV catheters and establish drips in at least two volunteers within the year leading up to execution.

In the two days prior to the execution, they also have to take part in at least four training sessions and two rehearsals.

"When I was in the death house for 30 days before execution, every two to three days they would take me down to medical and practice doing the execution," Creech said. "They would come get me out of the room I was in, take me to medical and when I was in medical, they'd go back and forth into the room and have somebody act like they were me."

The medical staff even mapped out his veins in the days leading up to the execution, but Creech said IDOC knew it was a challenge to get needles in his veins, and he had surgery on an aneurysm.

"They've known this forever, even when they did blood draws on me for diabetes and stuff, they had a hard time accessing the veins," Creech said. "My attorneys warned them about this, but apparently didn't take it to heart."

Since the failed execution, which was to be Idaho's first execution in 12 years, Creech said his health deteriorated.

"Some days I'm not even sure if I'm gonna live until the next day," Creech said. "I have chest pain all the time … I continue to have nightmares. One of the dreams I have is I wake up and I'm back on that table again and they're standing around me putting needles in again. Then the other one that really terrorizes me is I go into that room and it's my wife on that table – not me, she's on the table – and they're trying to put drugs in her arms and I'm trying to break the window out to get to her. And then I wake up."

Creech's death warrant expired that night, and a new warrant has not been issued.

"Living with the death penalty is the worst part of having the death penalty," Creech said. "If they execute you, it's over with. There's not more hurting. But when you're under the death penalty not knowing from one day to the next if you're going to get a death warrant or not, it's really bad. It plays on your mind every day. Like I said, I'm no saint, but I feel bad. As bad as a person can possibly feel."

Creech and KTVB's Morgan Romero talked about the murders he committed back in the 1970s, the ones that first landed him in prison and got him his first death sentence in Idaho.

He explained why he killed a fellow inmate, 22-year-old David Dale Jensen, in 1981 and the remorse he said he feels over it now.

Source: ktvb.com, Morgan Romero, June 13, 2024

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

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