Christa Pike is awake. Her lawyers said Tuesday that the Tennessee death row prisoner is conscious and speaking in a Nashville-area hospital, six days after the state gave her two doses of pentobarbital and she didn’t die.
She’s believed to be the first person in the modern era of the U.S. death penalty to survive after lethal injection drugs were actually given. Now that she’s alive and talking, Tennessee has to decide what it does next, and today her lawyers are in court trying to lock down the evidence of what went wrong.
What do we know about Christa Pike’s condition?
Only what her lawyers have said. The state won’t confirm anything, citing federal privacy law. Here’s their statement:
Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaking, and continues to receive critical medical care. Despite the severe damage she endured to her arms, she is still handcuffed and shackled to the bed. Her recovery is medically unprecedented.
Pike’s attorneys, October 6
As recently as Sunday, they’d said she was unconscious and on a ventilator. They say her prognosis is unclear and she faces “at a minimum” a long recovery. Earlier court filings described her arms as “swollen, burned, and blistered” after the execution team needed at least seven needles to get an IV in.
Dr. Joel Zivot, an Atlanta anesthesiologist who’s consulted for her legal team, told the AP the news “bodes well for a good recovery” but warned she’s still in intensive care. “There’s still a lot of bad things that can happen here, even when everyone is doing their job well,” he said. It could be weeks or months before anyone knows whether there’s lasting damage, including to her brain.
What happened to Christa Pike, and why was she on death row?
Pike, now 50, was sentenced to death in 1996 for the 1995 killing of Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old classmate in the Job Corps program in Knoxville. Pike was 18. Prosecutors said she and two others beat and stabbed Slemmer to death over a relationship dispute, carved a pentacle into her chest and took a piece of her skull. Slemmer’s family told FOX 17 that what Pike did to her was torture. Pike is the only woman on Tennessee’s death row.
On the night of September 30, Tennessee gave her two doses of pentobarbital at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. She survived and was taken to a hospital. It was the state’s second failed execution this year, after it called off Tony Carruthers’ execution in May when the team couldn’t place IV lines. Gov. Bill Lee halted the rest of this year’s executions, ordered an outside review, and the state prison commissioner, Frank Strada, is resigning.
Can Tennessee try to execute Christa Pike again?
That’s now the central question, and there’s almost no modern precedent. Legal experts quoted by the AP and FOX 17 see a few paths:
- Cruel and unusual punishment: Fordham law professor Deborah Denno, who’s studied execution methods for 36 years, says Pike has strong arguments that a second attempt would violate the Eighth Amendment. “They carried out every aspect of the execution,” she said. “She didn’t die, but every process they intended, they did it.”
- Double jeopardy: Denno says a second attempt could also amount to punishing Pike twice. Seattle University law professor Michael Russo is skeptical the Supreme Court would agree: “Her sentence was to die, to be executed, not to suffer an attempt at execution.”
- Competency: The state can’t execute someone who doesn’t understand why. If her recovery leaves her impaired, that could block another attempt.
- Commutation: Her lawyers are asking Gov. Lee, who leaves office in January, to change her sentence to life without parole. He hasn’t said whether he will.
Constitutional attorney David Raybin, who helped write Tennessee’s death penalty law, told FOX 17 she can argue, “You’ve had your chance to execute me, I’ve suffered all of this… You can no longer execute.” U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, the Republican running to replace Lee, has pushed the other way, saying the state should look at other methods, including bringing back the electric chair.
What’s happening in court today?
Pike’s lawyers filed an emergency motion in Davidson County Chancery Court asking a judge to order the Department of Correction to preserve evidence from September 30, including drug lot numbers and execution records. Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles scheduled a status conference for 11 a.m. Central today, and her lawyers plan to talk to reporters afterward. The department has said it followed its protocol exactly and that the drug has “consistently been effective.”
The BeezLoop Take
Nothing about this changes what Christa Pike did to Colleen Slemmer. It was savage, and Slemmer’s family has lived with it for 31 years. They deserve to be part of every conversation about what happens now.
But Tennessee’s position has collapsed on its own terms. The state says it followed every step of its protocol. It was warned in writing about her veins. It ran the full procedure, twice, and she lived. Trying again would mean strapping a woman with burned arms back onto the same gurney under the same protocol, or switching to the electric chair just to finish the job. That isn’t justice catching up to her. It’s the state refusing to admit its own system failed.
Life without parole means Pike never leaves prison. Lee has the power to make that her sentence and end this before he leaves office. The open question is whether he’ll use it, or hand the decision to a successor who’s already talking about the electric chair.
Sources: AP via PBS NewsHour · WVLT · FOX 17 Nashville · Globe via Yahoo · NBC News
