The cost to maintain Idaho’s execution capabilities for prisoners sentenced to death, including upgrades to the area planned for a firing squad, has grown to nearly $1.3 million, according to the state’s prison system.
The Idaho Department of Correction issued notice last week of changes to its procedures for lethal injection. They included construction of an “execution preparation room” just before prisoners enter the execution chamber at the state’s maximum security prison south of Boise.
There, execution team members, with help from a “qualified physician,” will decide whether to use a standard IV, or heightened means to inject the lethal chemicals. The state’s director of prisons recently helped enshrine use of a central line IV, which he previously called essentially a “surgical procedure,” for a lethal injection if a prisoner’s veins are deemed nonviable for execution purposes.
The policy and infrastructure updates came nearly eight months after Idaho prison officials called off the execution of death row prisoner Thomas Creech by lethal injection after about an hour because the execution “medical team” could not find a suitable vein for an IV. It was the first time in state history that Idaho failed to execute a prisoner — and just the sixth time recorded in the U.S., according to the Death Penalty Information Center .