The cost to maintain Idaho’s execution capabilities for prisoners sentenced to death, including upgrades to the area planned for a firing squad, has grown to nearly $1.3 million, according to the state’s prison system.

The Idaho Department of Correction issued notice last week of changes to its procedures for lethal injection. They included construction of an “execution preparation room” just before prisoners enter the execution chamber at the state’s maximum security prison south of Boise.

There, execution team members, with help from a “qualified physician,” will decide whether to use a standard IV, or heightened means to inject the lethal chemicals. The state’s director of prisons recently helped enshrine use of a central line IV, which he previously called essentially a “surgical procedure,” for a lethal injection if a prisoner’s veins are deemed nonviable for execution purposes.

The policy and infrastructure updates came nearly eight months after Idaho prison officials called off the execution of death row prisoner Thomas Creech by lethal injection after about an hour because the execution “medical team” could not find a suitable vein for an IV. It was the first time in state history that Idaho failed to execute a prisoner — and just the sixth time recorded in the U.S., according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Creech, 74, Idaho’s longest-serving death row prisoner after 50 years of incarceration, was issued another death warrant the day after the prison system announced its changes last week. His attorneys are pursuing a number of appeals as Creech again awaits his scheduled execution by lethal injection next month.

The cost for design and construction of the preparation room next to the execution chamber was $314,000, IDOC spokesperson Sanda Kuzeta-Cerimagic told the Idaho Statesman. Construction happened over the summer and took about seven weeks.

The Division of Building Safety issued permits to IDOC for construction and the building plan review in April, Idaho Public Television reported. Okland Construction in Boise performed the work, according to the building permit.

Last year, Idaho approved a law that made a firing squad the state’s backup execution method. But work to retrofit the execution chamber for that purpose has yet to be done. The Legislature committed $750,000 to the prison system for the project.

As part of the work for the preparation room, designs also were produced to incorporate future construction for the firing squad. The project is expected to take up to four months to build, and at a price tag of nearly $1 million, Kuzeta-Cerimagic said.

The cost and timeline are each based on an expedited time frame, IDOC said. Prison officials anticipate cost savings for the execution chamber’s transition for the firing squad if it’s completed without such haste.

“As I’ve said before, policy and infrastructure are intertwined,” IDOC Director Josh Tewalt told the Statesman in a July interview. “We can’t just build a footprint without being mindful of how that’s going to impact policy. So those two things have to happen concurrently, not necessarily consecutively.”

Tewalt told the Statesman in February immediately after the failed lethal injection of Creech that all state executions would have to be paused for the construction period. And with ongoing access to lethal injection drugs to execute prisoners as the state’s primary method, construction for the firing squad setup has not been prioritized.

The prison system has acquired six doses of pentobarbital, a powerful sedative, for use in state executions in the past year at a total cost of $150,000 — or what equates to $25,000 per dose. More than one dose is prepared for an execution in Idaho.

Prison officials have yet to decide on when construction would begin to accommodate a firing squad in the execution chamber, Kuzeta-Cerimagic said. IDOC likely will need to return to the Legislature in the session starting in January to request more funds — estimated to be as much as another $500,000 — to complete the retrofit for the state’s backup execution method.

Creech is set to be executed by lethal injection on Nov. 13. If it goes through, his execution would represent Idaho’s first in more than 12 years.

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