BOISE, Idaho — On Thursday afternoon, the Idaho Department of Correction served Thomas Eugene Creech, an inmate at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution, with a death warrant.
The warrant, issued by Fourth Judicial District Judge Jason D. Scott, schedules Creech's execution for November 8.
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Department officials say they have acquired the chemicals necessary to carry out an execution by lethal injection.
Creech claims he has killed more than 40 people, and he’s been sitting on death row in Idaho for more than 40 years for the murder of fellow inmate David Dale Jensen on May 13, 1981.
At the time of the murder in 1981, Jensen and Creech were both inmates housed inside the maximum security prison at Idaho’s penitentiary. Creech was serving time for two murder convictions.
In an exclusive letter to Idaho News 6, Creech previously told us, "I killed that guy, but he attacked me."
Creech went on to claim self-defense in the incident, but prosecutors argued he went above and beyond self-defense.
Following that murder in 1981, Creech was handed the death penalty sentence in 1983 for the second time in his life.
And in the midst of appeals, former Ada County Deputy Prosecutor Roger Bourne made this statement in court in 1995, “If the death penalty doesn't fit this defendant. Who does it fit? This defendant is a mass murderer. He has shown extreme violence while in the penitentiary. If the legislature didn’t intend it to fit this defendant. Who could it fit any better?”
Creech was scheduled for execution, again, in 1999, but on June 14th of that year, the Federal District Court granted a stay of execution.
Creech's execution is now set for November 8.
