Creech v. State
Annotate this CaseThe Supreme Court of the State of Idaho affirmed the dismissal of a successive post-conviction petition for relief filed by Thomas Eugene Creech, an inmate sentenced to death in 1995 for the murder of fellow inmate David Jensen. The district court had dismissed Creech's petition as untimely under Idaho Code section 19-2719, which requires capital defendants to file any legal or factual challenge to the sentence or conviction that is known or reasonably should be known within forty-two days of the filing of the judgment imposing the death sentence. Creech argued that his death sentence, which was imposed by a judge without the participation of a jury, was unlawful based on the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment under the U.S. Constitution and the Idaho Constitution. He also claimed that societal norms have evolved to the point where his judge-imposed death sentence is now deemed cruel and unusual punishment. However, the Supreme Court held that Creech failed to articulate a claim based on information he did not know or could not have reasonably known within the forty-two day period, thus upholding the district court's dismissal of his petition as untimely.
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