Idaho takes step toward its first execution in nearly a decade. Death warrant is signed.
For the first time in nearly a decade, Idaho might execute a man on death row.
A death warrant was signed Thursday for Gerald Ross Pizzuto Jr., who was sentenced to die in a capital punishment case in 1986 for two murders in Idaho County. Judge Jay Gaskill, the administrative judge for the Second Judicial District, signed the death warrant.
The execution is scheduled for June 2, according to a copy of the warrant obtained by the Idaho Statesman. It states that “no valid stays of execution are currently in place” for Pizzuto. With the death warrant being issued, the state has 30 days to execute him.
Pizzuto was sentenced in 1986 in the July 1985 murders of Berta Herndon and her nephew, Del Herndon, in Idaho County. According to an appeal filed to the U.S. Supreme Court in March 2020, Pizzuto forced the two into their mountain cabin while he held a .22-caliber rifle. He later tied up the two and bludgeoned them with a hammer.
Berta Herndon died from the hammer blows, and Del Herndon died after Pizzuto shot him in the head. Pizzuto stole money from the two and later bragged about the killings to associates, according to the Supreme Court appeal.
Idaho conducts executions by lethal injection, and the state has executed three people since 1994.
If carried out, Pizzuto would be the first person to be executed in Idaho in nine years. The state executed Richard Leavitt on June 12, 2012, for a 1984 murder in Blackfoot. The year before, Idaho executed Paul Rhodes on Nov. 18, 2011, for three murders he committed in 1987.
Both executions took place while former Gov. Butch Otter was at the helm. Nearing the end of his term, Otter told reporters in 2018 that the decision on whether or not to carry out a death warrant was among the most difficult choices he made as governor. His predecessor, Gov. Brad Little, now faces the same decision.
When reached for comment on Pizzuto’s execution, Marissa Morrison, a spokesperson for Little’s office, said that “the governor will provide support for (Idaho Department of Correction) Director Josh Tewalt and the department to comply with this most solemn of responsibilities.”
News of Pizzuto’s death warrant was first reported Thursday by The Marshall Project. The news outlet also reported that Pizzuto suffers from bladder tumors, Type 2 diabetes and other medical ailments.
Pizzuto and fellow death row inmate Thomas Creech filed a lawsuit against the state in 2020 that argued Idaho officials violated their rights by providing zero information on the state’s execution plans. In the complaint, attorneys said Pizzuto was placed in hospice care in November 2019, and if the state tried to execute him, Pizzuto would “experience sensations associated with a heart attack, including significant pain and a feeling of impending doom.”
The complaint also stated that Pizzuto experienced severe trauma as a child, and the use of a paralytic during his execution might “recreate the feeling he had in childhood of being immobilized and tortured.”
The lawsuit also claimed that IDOC officials purchased lethal injection drugs in 2012 with a suitcase full of cash in a Walmart parking lot in Tacoma, Washington. Pizzuto and Creech’s lawsuit was later closed.
Like the other Idaho death row inmates, Pizzuto is in the custody of the Idaho Maximum Security Institution south of Boise. All Idaho executions take place in the prison’s F-block.
Including Pizzuto, there are seven men and one woman on death row in Idaho.
