District judge issues death warrant for longtime Idaho death row inmate Gerald Pizzuto
Idaho secured a death warrant Wednesday to end the life of one of its longest-serving death row inmates, setting a date next month for the state’s first execution in more than a decade.
Gerald Pizzuto, 66, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Dec. 15. He has remained on Idaho death row since his May 1986 murder conviction for killing two people during an armed robbery north of McCall in the summer of 1985.
The death warrant, signed Wednesday by Idaho District Court Judge Jay Gaskill, marks the second time in as many years that the state has sought to execute Pizzuto. He has avoided three prior execution dates during his more than 36 years on death row, most recently in June 2021 after the Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole granted him a clemency review.
The Idaho attorney general’s office, which is overseeing Pizzuto’s execution process, declined an Idaho Statesman request for comment Wednesday.
Pizzuto’s attorneys with the nonprofit Federal Defender Services of Idaho called on Gov. Brad Little to uphold the parole board’s prior recommendation to allow their client to die of natural causes in prison.
“The state is trying to execute Mr. Pizzuto as quickly as possible to prevent the courts from giving thorough and careful consideration to whether his execution would be lawful,” Deborah Czuba, supervising attorney of the nonprofit’s unit that oversees death penalty cases, said in a statement. “The governor can still accept the recommendation of his commission and spare Mr. Pizzuto, the public and especially the prison staff a needless execution.”
Little’s office did not immediately respond a Statesman request for comment Wednesday.
Pizzuto attorneys attempt to block death warrant
The nonprofit law office previously requested that the state wait to pursue Pizzuto’s execution until at least January, out of consideration for Idaho Department of Correction employees avoiding participation in a lethal injection during the holiday season.
Pizzuto’s attorneys committed to exploring all legal avenues in state and federal court to block their client’s execution. Pizzuto is terminally ill with late-stage bladder cancer, and has been under hospice care for more than two years.
Pizzuto’s latest death warrant comes after the Idaho Supreme Court last month denied his attorneys’ request for a rehearing in a lawsuit centered around whether the governor has final say over clemency decisions. The state’s high court ruled in August that he does, after voters approved a constitutional amendment in 1986 that sought to rein in the parole board’s power.
The question was relevant to Pizzuto, because the parole board voted 4-3 last year to reduce his sentence to life in prison, based on arguments about his troubled upbringing and serious health issues. Little rejected the parole board’s decision, upholding Pizzuto’s death sentence.
Meanwhile, Pizzuto’s attorneys filed a motion to preclude a death warrant while an appeal of the case moves forward. That case is scheduled for a Dec. 8 hearing, also with Idaho District Judge Gaskill, of Nez Perce County.
Idaho’s dubious history with execution drugs
The state next will need to obtain lethal injection chemicals to carry out Pizzuto’s execution. Department of Correction Director Josh Tewalt informed the state prisons board, the governor’s office and the attorney general’s office that the department does not presently have execution drugs on hand, the Department of Correction said in a statement Wednesday.
“Efforts to lawfully source chemicals are ongoing,” the department’s statement read.
The Idaho Department of Correction last purchased lethal injection drugs to execute an inmate in late 2011, and again to execute another — the state’s last — in summer 2012. They employed unconventional means, state records showed, to secure the chemicals to end the life first of convicted triple-murderer Paul Rhoades, 54, followed by Richard Leavitt, 53, who also was convicted of murder.
State prison officials — including Tewalt — used more than $20,000 in cash to buy chemicals for the two executions from out-of-state pharmacies, each with questionable regulatory histories, according to public records previously obtained by the Statesman. For the Rhoades execution, they acquired them from a compounding pharmacy in Salt Lake City, while state records showed prison officials boarding a state-chartered flight to buy them from a compounding pharmacy in Tacoma, Washington, for the Leavitt execution.
The intricacies of the state’s methods came to light in a years-long public records lawsuit filed by the Americans Civil Liberties Union of Idaho on behalf University of Idaho law professor. The Idaho Supreme Court ultimately compelled the Department of Correction to produce the documents, as well as pay more than $170,000 in state funds to cover attorneys’ fees and other costs.
To prevent the release of such documents, which could identify drug sources the state may use going forward, the Idaho attorney general’s office this year collaborated with the Department of Correction to draft legislation to exempt the records from future public access. Tewalt asserted to members of the Legislature that without its passage, the state would be unable to perform lethal injections, because it could not guarantee the confidentiality of the sellers.
Opponents of the bill argued that it removed necessary public scrutiny to ensure the chemicals the state used wouldn’t violate an inmate’s rights against cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“It is inconsistent for lawmakers to tout the importance of government transparency, while simultaneously cloaking the state’s greatest power — the power to end someone’s life — in a veil of secrecy,” the ACLU of Idaho’s Lauren Bramwell told the Statesman at the time.
The Legislature passed House Bill 658 in March, and Gov. Little signed into law a week later. The records showing where Idaho acquires lethal injection drugs for Pizzuto’s scheduled execution today are now no longer public.
