Three weeks before Idaho death row prisoner Thomas Creech is set to be executed, his attorneys are seeking a new clemency review after alleging in a federal lawsuit that prosecutors and the state parole board violated their client’s constitutional rights.
Creech, 73, has been incarcerated in Idaho for nearly 50 years following murder convictions for killing three men. The state parole board agreed to hold a hearing last month to consider dropping Creech’s death sentence to life in prison, which halted his prior scheduled execution late last year.
Following last month’s all-day clemency hearing , the Commission of Pardons and Parole deadlocked in a 3-3 vote, resulting in a denial of Creech’s request for the reduced sentence. The board’s seventh commissioner, Patrick McDonald, who could have broken the tie, recused himself from the hearing. Ashley Dowell, the parole board’s executive director, declined to disclose the reason for McDonald’s recusal.
Now, Creech’s attorneys with the nonprofit Federal Defender Services of Idaho are raising legal issues over that recusal and the prosecution’s use of “false statements and questionable evidence” at the clemency hearing, according to the lawsuit. They allege that the prosecution’s failure to provide them with notice of the evidence beforehand, and the parole board’s unwillingness to delay a decision while they investigated the allegations, violated Creech’s due process rights guaranteed under the 14th Amendment.