Idaho | Firing squad chamber priced at $1M as state preps for next execution by lethal injection

The cost to maintain Idaho’s execution capabilities for prisoners sentenced to death, including upgrades to the area planned for a firing squad, has grown to nearly $1.3 million, according to the state’s prison system.

The Idaho Department of Correction issued notice last week of changes to its procedures for lethal injection. These changes include the construction of an “execution preparation room” just before prisoners enter the execution chamber at the state’s maximum-security prison south of Boise. There, execution team members, with help from a “qualified physician,” will decide whether to use a standard IV or heightened means to inject the lethal chemicals.

The state’s director of prisons recently supported the use of a central line IV — previously described as essentially a “surgical procedure” — for lethal injection if a prisoner’s veins are deemed nonviable for execution purposes. These policy and infrastructure updates come nearly eight months after Idaho prison officials called off the execution of death row prisoner Thomas Creech by lethal injection after about an hour due to the execution “medical team” being unable to find a suitable vein for an IV. This marked the first time in Idaho’s history that the state failed to execute a prisoner, and only the sixth time this has been recorded in the U.S., according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Creech, 74, is Idaho’s longest-serving death row prisoner, having spent 50 years in incarceration. He was issued another death warrant the day after the prison system announced these changes last week. His attorneys are pursuing several appeals as Creech awaits his rescheduled execution by lethal injection next month.

The cost for the design and construction of the preparation room next to the execution chamber was $314,000, according to Idaho Department of Correction (IDOC) spokesperson Sanda Kuzeta-Cerimagic. The construction occurred over the summer and took about seven weeks. The Division of Building Safety issued permits for the construction and the building plan review in April, as reported by Idaho Public Television. Okland Construction in Boise performed the work, according to the building permit.

Last year, Idaho approved a law that made a firing squad the state’s backup execution method. However, the work to retrofit the execution chamber for this purpose has yet to be completed. The Legislature committed $750,000 to the prison system for this project. As part of the work on the preparation room, designs were also produced to incorporate future construction for the firing squad. The project is expected to take up to four months to complete and cost nearly $1 million, according to Kuzeta-Cerimagic. These costs and the timeline are based on an expedited timeframe, according to IDOC officials. They anticipate potential cost savings if the execution chamber’s transition for the firing squad is completed without such urgency.

“As I’ve said before, policy and infrastructure are intertwined,” IDOC Director Josh Tewalt told the Idaho Statesman in a July interview. “We can’t just build a footprint without being mindful of how that’s going to impact policy. So those two things have to happen concurrently, not necessarily consecutively.”

Tewalt also told the Statesman in February, shortly after the failed lethal injection of Creech, that all state executions would have to be paused during the construction period. Given that Idaho still has access to lethal injection drugs as the primary method for executions, the construction of the firing squad setup has not been prioritized.

In the past year, the prison system has acquired six doses of pentobarbital, a powerful sedative used in state executions, at a total cost of $150,000 — or $25,000 per dose. More than one dose is prepared for each execution in Idaho. Next month, Idaho plans to execute a death row prisoner for the first time since June 2012, marking only the third execution in the state in over 30 years.

Prison officials have not yet decided when construction will begin to accommodate a firing squad in the execution chamber, according to Kuzeta-Cerimagic. IDOC will likely need to return to the Legislature during the session starting in January to request additional funds — potentially as much as $500,000 — to complete the retrofit for the state’s backup execution method.

Creech is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Nov. 13. If carried out, it will be Idaho’s first execution in over 12 years.

Source: idahostatesman.com, Kevin Fixler, October 20, 2024

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