The planned execution of a 73-year-old serial killer has been delayed after prison officials in the US state of Idaho failed to give him a lethal injection.
Thomas Eugene Creech, one of the country’s longest-serving death row inmates, was imprisoned in 1974 and has been convicted of five murders in three states and suspected of more.
He was serving life when he beat a fellow inmate, 22-year-old David Dale Jensen, to death in 1981 - the crime for which he was to be executed more than four decades later.
The attempted execution lasted almost an hour before the warden of the Idaho Maximum Security Institution called it off after a medical team repeatedly failed to establish an IV line to administer the fatal drug.
Observers said Creech frequently looked at family members and representatives who were in a witness room and appeared to mouth "I love you" to someone in the room.
His lawyers immediately filed a new motion for a stay in U.S. District Court, saying "Given the badly botched execution attempt this morning, which proves IDOC's inability to carry out a humane and constitutional execution, undersigned counsel preemptively seek an emergency stay of execution to prevent any further attempts today."
The Idaho Department of Corrections said its death warrant for Creech would expire and it was considering next steps.
Creech's attorneys had filed a flurry of late appeals hoping to forestall his execution but the courts found no grounds for leniency.
Creech's last chance - a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court - was denied a few hours before the scheduled execution Wednesday.
On Tuesday night, Creech spent time with spent time with his wife at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution south of Boise and ate a last meal including fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy and ice cream.
A group of about 15 protesters had gathered outside the prison Wednesday, at one point singing "Amazing Grace."
Creech was first imprisoned in Idaho in 1974 for shooting dead John Wayne Bradford and Edward Thomas Arnold, two house painters who picked up Creech and his girlfriend while they were hitchhiking.
He was serving a life sentence for those murders in 1981 when he beat Jensen to death.
Creech's supporters pushed to have his sentence converted to life without parole, saying he is a deeply changed man.
Several years ago he married the mother of a correctional officer, and former prison staffers said he was known for writing poetry and frequently expressing gratitude for their work but Ada County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Jill Longhorst said he is a psychopath - lacking remorse and empathy.
In addition to the Idaho murders, Creech was convicted of killing both William Joseph Dean in Oregon and Vivian Grant Robinson in California in 1974. He was also charged with killing Sandra Jane Ramsamooj in Oregon that year, but the charge was later dropped in light of his other murder sentences.
Creech's execution was to be Idaho's first in 12 years.
Last year state lawmakers passed a law authorizing execution by firing squad when lethal injection is not available.
Prison officials have not yet written a standard operating policy for the use of firing squad, nor have they constructed a facility where a firing squad execution could occur.
Both of those things would have to happen before the state could attempt to use the new law, which would likely trigger several legal challenges in court.
