Opinion ID: 2604767
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Execution for Creech

Text: A few people by their crimes leave society no choice but to kill them for its own protection. Thomas Eugene Creech who has been convicted of five murders, is one of those people. He should be sentenced to death for the most recent of his murders, the May 13 slaying of fellow Idaho Penitentiary inmate David Jensen. Longtime readers of this editorial page will recognize that this stance is a turnaround for The Statesman. The change of position, taken with a good deal of soul-searching, reflects changes in membership on the editorial board and concurrent changes in the beliefs of some members. (For an explanation of why the position was changed, see the Dear Reader column on the opposite page.) The general philosophical position in favor of the death penalty is based upon the belief that society must protect itself, and that in an imperfect world there is no way to protect against some people so dangerous and so irredeemable except to end their lives. Creech is the example that proves the point. In 1976, Creech was sentenced to death for the 1974 murders of two men near Donnelly. That sentence was reduced to two terms of life imprisonment when the Idaho Supreme Court declared the state's 1973 mandatory death penalty law unconstitutional. The court's decision was a good one. It followed a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that mandatory death penalties are arbitrary and capricious because they do not allow judges to consider mitigating factors in cases. The Idaho law was rewritten in 1977 to include a list of factors to guide sentencing and meet the constitutional requirements laid down in the U.S. Supreme Court decision. In 1979, Creech pleaded guilty to another murder that took place in 1974, this one the shooting death of a Portland man. Creech again escaped the death penalty. Oregon's capital punishment law also had been declared unconstitutional. On Friday, a California state appeals court upheld Creech's first-degree murder conviction in 1980 for the 1974 slaying of a Sacramento man. That crime, like the others, preceded a ruling that the state death-penalty law in effect at the time was unconstitutional. Then, last May, Creech beat Jensen to death with a sock full of flashlight batteries while the two inmates were incarcerated together during an exercise period. Jensen was no model citizen; at age 23 he had been in and out of jail on theft convictions. Still, he deserved protection. And if Oregon or Idaho had had viable death penalty laws in force at the time of Creech's earlier murders, Jensen might have been protected. He might be alive today. By all accounts Jensen was a wayward but unviolent young man who never should have been locked up with someone like Creech, who had been implicated in three earlier attacks on jail inmates. For that mistake, prison authorities have to bear the blame. But to argue that improving administration of our prisons and parole systems negates the need for the death penalty is to ignore reality. It is the nature of institutions that mistakes are made. If steps can be taken to end the possibility that mistakes will result in harm to members of society, then those steps must be taken. Obviously, there is at least one such step  to put to death those who have proved beyond all reasonable doubt that they are a threat to the life of anyone with whom they come in contact. To take the step involves a terrible responsibility. Capital punishment must be used sparingly and with every effort to be fair to the convicted murderer. Yet, if society is to protect itself absolutely against the likes of Thomas Creech, then such people must die.