Chad Daybell Has Been Handed a Death Sentence — When Will He Be Executed?
Inmates on Idaho's death row have spent decades there.
Published March 13 2025, 9:19 a.m. ET
Almost a year after his second wife Lori Vallow was convicted of the murder of her children and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, Chad Daybell learned his fate. In June 2024, family members of Daybell's victims opened up to jurors regarding how Daybell's crimes impacted them. After meeting Vallow, the Mormon author fell in love and started a Doomsday cult with her. He later killed his first wife Tammy Daybell and helped Vallow murder her two children.
"It makes me angry and it destroys me to know Tammy was treated how she was," said Tammy's father, Ron Douglas, per CNN. A relative of Vallow's kids said, "I sit here today and try and explain the immense pain that me and everyone in my family continues to endure daily." After all the victim impact statements were read, Judge Steven Boyce imposed the death sentence. When will Chad Daybell be executed? Here's what we know.
When will Chad Daybell be executed? It could be a while.
According to East Idaho News, it could be decades before Daybell is executed. As of March 2025, there are nine inmates on death row in Idaho. The longest-serving inmate is Thomas Creech, who was sentenced to die in 1984 over 40 years ago. The other seven inmates were sentenced in 1986, 1992, 1993, 1996, 2004, and 2017. Creech would have been put to death in February 2025 except medical workers couldn't establish an IV line.
L. LaMont Anderson, the chief of the Idaho Attorney General's Office Capital Litigation Unit, has been a lawyer for 27 years. He attributes the long wait time to numerous appeals. "The appellate work from the capital arena includes appeals to the Idaho Supreme Court, the United States Supreme Court, the U.S. District Court for the state of Idaho, and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals," explained Anderson. He has never seen a capital appeal reach the Idaho Supreme Court.
As far as waiving the appeals goes, Anderson is aware of only one person who has done that. In 1990, Keith Wells was convicted of killing John Justad and Brandi Rains with a baseball bat simply because "it was time for them to die." Three years later he dropped all appeals because he had no interest in spending his life behind bars. Wells was executed via lethal injection in January 1994.
The prosecutor argued hard for the death penalty.
Prosecutor Rob Wood told the jury that Daybell killed for money. He was convicted of insurance fraud in connection to Tammy's death, as he would have received a hefty amount of money via her life insurance policies. Daybell and Vallow also drew from Social Security benefits she received after the deaths of her two children.
Wood also described the murders as heinous, atrocious, and cruel. "This defendant exhibited utter disregard for human life," said Wood. "He defendant, by his conduct, whether such conduct was before, during, or after the commission of the murders at hand, has exhibited a propensity to commit murder, which will probably constitute a continuing threat to society." He then told the jury that it was up to them to decide if these factors were severe enough to impose the death penalty.