Idaho halts man’s execution after eight attempts to find vein for lethal injection

Warden calls off execution of convicted murderer Thomas Creech, 73, minutes after he was wheeled into execution chamber

Idaho on Wednesday halted the execution of serial killer Thomas Eugene Creech, one of the longest-serving death row inmates in the US, after a medical team repeatedly failed to find a vein where they could establish an intravenous line to carry out the lethal injection.

Creech, 73, was imprisoned in 1974 and has been convicted of five murders in three states and suspected of several more. He was already serving life in prison when he beat a fellow inmate, 22-year-old David Dale Jensen, to death in 1981 - the crime for which Creech was to be executed more than four decades later.