'I survived botched death row execution and there's one face I'll never forget'
After being stabbed several times with needles about to administer a lethal injection, death row inmate Thomas Creech will never forget this one moment
Surviving death row is a very unique experience and feels like it has come straight from a fictional film or book. But for one man in the US, that became a reality after surviving an attempted lethal injection when things went wrong in a botched attempt last year.
Thomas Creech is Idaho’s longest-serving death row inmate, with his execution being delayed and delayed after the medical team failed to find an IV line, "rendering the execution unable to proceed”.
The team spent more than an hour trying to find a suitable vein in his hands, arms, legs and ankles, but eventually gave up, sending him back to his cell.
The 75-year-old is now one of the US’s oldest death row inmates and has been in prison since 1974. He was sentenced to die after being found guilty of the fatal beating of a fellow inmate in 1981.
In total, Creech has been found guilty of five murders across three states but is still suspected to be involved with several other attacks after confessing to killing 42 people while on the stand - something he has since taken back.
But now, after more than 50 years in jail, he has spoken out about the moment he thought his life was about to come to an end. He described his ordeal of being repeatedly stabbed with needles, knowing that if the latest jab was successful, he would be dead within minutes.
Speaking to the New York Times, Creech said: “The worst ones was when they got down to my ankles. I was thinking the whole time that this is really it. I’m dead. This is my day to die.
“I thought maybe I might already be in the afterlife, even now, today, I stop and I have to catch myself and think, ‘Am I really dead? I was supposed to be dead on the 28th of February. Am I really dead, and this is part of the afterlife? Continued punishment for my sins that I’ve committed?’"
During his time on death row, Creech fell in love with his now wife Leann, one of his prison guard’s mothers, who he began to write to and eventually got married to while incarcerated in 1998.
And it’s a memory of his wife during his planned execution that has stuck with him the most, describing the wife's expression during the ordeal, he said: "That look on her face tore my heart out."
He had managed to spend some brief time with her before the planned injection, saying goodbye to Leann, his stepson and his lawyers while eating his last meal of chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy from the prison kitchen."
The mental ordeal of surviving his planned death is something his lawyers have openly campaigned against.
The New York Times claims the botched effort was down to untrained executions and a difficulty in ordering the correct lethal drugs for an ageing death row population.