The state of Texas witnessed a botched execution on Wednesday after a lethal injection execution of convicted serial killer Thomas Creech in Idaho was stopped after a medical team couldn't find the vein to insert an IV line.

Idaho Department of Corrections Director Josh Tewalt stated that the execution was halted after the failure of eight attempts.

At the Idaho Maximum Security Institution in the capital Boise, Tewalt said, "We don't have an idea of timeframes or next steps at this point," adding, "Those are things we will be discussing in the days ahead."

Brenda Rodriguez, a reporter with the local KTVB TV station, claimed that the serial killer didn't seem to be in severe pain even though he told the medical staff that his "legs hurt a bit."

"At the very end, when the execution was halted, he was just looking up," she said as a witness, noting that "it felt like he was almost in relief."

Creech has been on Death Row for over 40 years and was going to be the first person executed in Idaho in 12 years, after murdering his cellmate in 1981 with a battery-filled sock. At the time, he was convicted of five other murders, but he claimed to have committed dozens more.

Same day, different fate, unjust system

This comes after 50-year-old Ivan Cantu was put to death by lethal injection the same day, after being convicted of killing his cousin and his cousin's fiancee in 2001 - a double homicide that Cantu had been insisting for years that he had not committed.

Cantu's fiancee at the time, Amy Boettcher, testified at his trial that he admitted to committing the crime by taking her to Mosqueda's home to show her the bodies and look for hidden drugs. Evidence entered at the trial was a pair of jeans with the victims' blood found in Cantu's kitchen trash can.

The defendant's lawyers maintain that Boettcher lied on the witness stand while the jeans, which were too large for Cantu, were planted by someone else. Boettcher has died since then.

The defendant insisted that they were killed by a drug dealer to whom Mosqueda owed money.

Those expressing doubts about Cantu's conviction were the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops, which called for the halt of the execution over "serious uncertainties" in the case, and the foreman of the jury who presided over his 2001 trial.

Capital punishment has been abolished in 23 states, and the governors of Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee have all put a hold on its application. 

This year, only one execution was recorded for an Alabama inmate who was the first to be put to death by nitrogen gas.

Last year, 24 executions in the United States in 2023 were recorded, and all of them were done by lethal injection.