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The Cost of Killing in Idaho

By Michael Blankenship

BOISE - Thomas Creech sits and waits on Idaho?s death row. Creech was already serving a life sentence for a double murder in 1981, when he was convicted of bludgeoning a fellow inmate to death using a sock filled with batteries. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Ada County. But almost three decades later, Creech still doesn't have an execution date.And your tax money is keeping him alive.Through a string of appeals over the decades, many of them mandatory in capital cases, Creech waits. And the relatives of his victims wait. And Idaho taxpayers spend.For that reason alone, Democratic State Senator Elliot Werk of Boise says it's time to toss out the death penalty in Idaho. "It's just a huge waste of government money and money that could go to other really beneficial uses," says Werk...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Justice Gambit on November 03, 2009 (boomark / email).