Execution Order To Be Reviewed

A Feb. 7 execution order has been issued for condemned murderer Thomas Eugene Creech, who pleaded guilty to the May 1981 murder of a fellow prison inmate.

But the death warrant signed by 4th District Judge Robert Newhouse will be stayed because the sentence still must be reviewed by the Idaho Supreme Court, Deputy Attorney General Lynn Thomas said.

Creech, 46, an Ohio native and former church sexton who has been in prison since 1974, initially was sentenced to death by Newhouse in January 1982 for beating David Dale Jensen to death with a sock full of batteries at the prison south of Boise.

But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the sentence in March 1991, ruling that the definition of “utter disregard for human life” in Idaho’s death penalty law was unconstitutionally vague.

Creech later was resentenced by Newhouse.