In his first interview since surviving a botched execution in Idaho in February, Thomas Creech tells the New York Times, “I was thinking the whole time that this is really it. I’m dead. This is my day to die.” The execution team tried and failed to find a vein in which to insert an IV line for its lethal drugs for 42 minutes before abandoning the effort. “Three medical team members tried eight times through multiple limbs and appendages to establish IV access,” Corrections Director Josh Tewalt told a news conference after the botched attempt. “What they encountered in some instances was an access issue, but in others where they could establish access, it was a vein quality issue that made them not confident in their ability to administer chemicals through the IV site.” It was the state’s first execution attempt since 2012. Creech, 73, has been on death row longer than any other person in the state’s history. He was convicted of five murders in three states. The state hasn’t said if or when it will try to execute him again.
“When states go rogue in their efforts to obtain execution drugs, as they have for more than a decade, they undermine this country’s commitment to treating even those we execute humanely,” law professor Austin Sarat states in a recent op-ed in The Hill. Sarat is calling on the Biden administration “to make good on its announced opposition to capital punishment,” and grant a request by eight Democratic senators, including Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren, to order the DOJ to rescind a Trump directive that the Food and Drug Administration cannot regulate execution drugs.
The administration will have to take steps to ensure that, wherever they are used, lethal injection drugs are subject to the most stringent regulation and control,” Sarat writes.
Rebel Nun” paints a portrait of resolve, vulnerability, strength and unwavering dedication to justice reform in America,” Deborah Rudolph writes in the Tribeca Film Festival newsletter about a new documentary on Sister Helen Prejean, screening at the festival this month. Sister Helen, a Louisiana native and a member of the Catholic Sisters of St. Joseph, is known worldwide for her tireless work against the death penalty. She is the author of three books, including Dead Man Walking (1993), a memoir about her first experience as a spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, who was executed by Louisiana in 1984; The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions, in 2004; and her third book, River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey, in 2019.
