Here in Idaho it's been nearly a decade since
the state executed someone on death row.
Recently, one of Idaho's longest serving
death row inmates made headlines,
Gerald Pizzuto, junior.
He's been on death row for 36 years.
Earlier this year, the Commission of
Pardons and Parole voted to reduce
his death sentence to life in prison.
Instead, he's now terminally ill
and no longer a threat to anyone
as what they deemed that case is
still being litigated, litigated,
but it did get us wondering about
all the intricacies of the death
penalty and reasons why some like.
Pseudo are on death row in Idaho for decades,
our Shire Matsuzawa
looked into it.
Now there are 27 states, including Idaho,
that currently authorized capital
punishment in the United States
and those states are in red.
Three of those states have
a moratorium on executions,
Pennsylvania, California and Oregon.
And, as you're probably aware of,
the death penalty is complicated and there
are many people who play a role in it,
including witnesses.
Behind this fence,
said some of Idaho's death row inmates,
eight people are currently
on Idaho's death row,
including one female Robin Rowe
Idaho's longest serving death row
prisoner Thomas Creech was sentenced
nearly four decades ago in 1983.
Taking longer and longer and
it's gotten longer over time.
In 2000, the Bureau of Justice
Statistics said that the average
amount of time that an individual
was on death row was 7.7 years.
At the end of 2020,
the Bureau of Justice Statistics
said the average was 19.4
years ago. Robert Dunham is the
executive director of the death
Penalty Information Center.
It's a nonprofit that doesn't take a
position for or against capital punishment.
It takes a long time.
For cases to be properly looked at,
we spoke with Elle Lamont Anderson,
the chief of the Capital Litigation
Unit in the Idaho Attorney
General's Office to explain the
process and why it takes so long.
He says it starts with the trial that's
followed by the sentencing hearing.
If a death sentence is imposed,
then they have what we call
post conviction relief.
From there it can go through a
complex route of higher courts
with some making it all the way to
the United States Supreme Court.
Within that time frame, you can have
successive post conviction petitions.
That get the federal proceedings sidetracked.
And so it to do the review that
is involved, at least in Idaho.
It just takes a very long time,
so long that Anderson is still working on
some of the same cases he started working
on when he took the job 25 years ago.
We have eight death sentence murders and.
Less than half of those are what you
would call new cases. The others are old.
From the 80s nineties early 2000s,
in 2014 the Idaho Legislature's
Office of Performance Evaluations
conducted a study of the financial
costs of the death penalty.
It found death penalty cases cost more
than sentencing a person to life without
parole because capital cases take longer
to resolve than non capital cases.
The last time Idaho executed someone
on death row was back in 2012 when
Richard Levitt was put to death
by lethal injection his execution.
Came just seven months after
Paul Rhodes was executed.
I was very intense.
It was very challenging.
It's very there's so many
aspects that play into it.
Twin Falls County Commissioner
Brent Reinke was serving as the
director of the Idaho Department of
Corrections when those two executions
happened nearly a decade ago,
and that time period,
it was very difficult to be able to
acquire the necessary drugs to be
able to carry out the execution,
and so that was a very daunting task.
Working with a lot of other States
and a lot of other jurisdictions
trying to understand where we
might be able to acquire those,
how that might be done.
And then we did a tremendous
amount of rehearsing.
Leading up to that particular event,
obtaining those drugs sparked controversy
and a call for more transparency.
After reports, say,
states like Idaho sent employees to
pharmacies and other states with a
suitcase full of cash to pick up the
drugs to be used in the execution,
which brought up questions about
the drug supplier as well as the
nature of the drug and its efficacy.
Idaho also
has as a very serious issue the question
of secrecy and public accountability.
The state has said that it's had
difficulty in obtaining execution drugs,
but when you look at the states practices,
you understand that it's engaged
in cloak and dagger activities
in trying to obtain the drugs.
Just last month, Idaho Governor
Brad Little signed into law a bill
that now increases the secrecy
surrounding Idaho's execution drugs.
A bill some say stems from what
happened nearly a decade ago.
Supporters of the bill say this
was the only way the state.
Would be able to continue to carry
out lawful executions because no
suppliers of lethal injection chemicals
will sell the drugs to the state
without guaranteed confidentiality.
Looking back on the executions
rankie called them the most
difficult task you can have in
the Idaho criminal justice system.
It's something that that is is
permanent and we want to do that.
As I've indicated with
this much professionalism,
dignity and respect,
which is what our governor ask of us.
And as what we provided,
and I'm very proud of them.
Men and women that carried that out.
We made sure that we dotted
every eye and crossed every T so
that we could carry out as the
governor. Next, as part of Idaho's
policy for executions, media witnesses
are present on behalf of the public.
Associated Press correspondent Rebecca
Boone was one of those witnesses.
So it's an unusual thing in our
state compared to some other states.
But it's always kind of there in the
background because you never know
when the next one is going to occur.
She was there to monitor the
execution and explain what happened.
So the public can then decide how
they feel about executions and how
the state is carrying them out.
They're quite serious.
You're seeing somebody be put to death.
It's hard to explain the feeling that you
get when that happens because it is so far
beyond the norm of what we experience,
mostly in our day-to-day life.
There's the human element
you can't get away from.
The fact that this is somebody who comes
into the Chamber and you know they are.
They know they're about to die,
and you know they're about to die and
everybody else knows they're about to die.
And then there's families who are
hoping this will be closure to the,
you know, the the toughest,
most awful moments of their lives,
like it's just.
All around.
A very weighty.
Weighty moment and with every execution
Co director of the Idaho Innocence
Project and the director of
the Forensic Justice Project at
Boise State, Doctor Greg Hempcon
says there's a risk of a mistake
we've had over 1500 executions since
they made it legal again in 7th,
9th, 1976 in this country,
we've had 187 people who are on death row,
exonerated, found innocent.
So if we had rapid.
Justice, and I think we do.
In some states those people would
have all been dead because it takes
10 to 20 years to get someone out.
Doctor Hampton says that's a huge error rate.
I'm not here to debate the morality,
just those numbers.
And if you execute someone,
there's nothing that all this equipment
can do to restore anything to that person.
I want them to look at the
numbers because I I, you know,
I think while we have a gut
reaction to crime and it's horrible,
you know I get.
To have to see a lot of it,
the numbers tell us that we do
make mistakes and do we want
those to be irreversible mistakes?
While the debate about the morality
of the death penalty continues,
many involved in the process agree that
transparency is vital to the process.
It's important that people really
understand what that's all about.
So they can make an informed
decision regarding whether they do.
Or don't support the death penalty or
just don't care one way or the other.
I also asked Anderson what the most
challenging part of this process was.
He said it was having to tell the
family of the parties involved
when a person has to be resentenced
because as we just saw some of
these cases can go on for decades,
which means the families of both
parties are also continuing to
deal with that emotional toll.
As for Gerald Pizzuto,
one of Idaho's longest serving death row
inmates who recently made headlines,
the Attorney General's office says the
case is scheduled to be argued before
the Idaho Supreme Court in June now.
We did reach out to both the
Idaho Department of Corrections
and the Commission of Pardons and
Parole about this story.
Both could not comment on matters pertaining
to the death penalty at this time,
and we should know this is just a
small aspect of the death penalty.
There are so many more layers to it
and we'll have links to resources
in this story at ktvb.com.