Christa Pike remained unconscious and under guard in a Nashville hospital days after a botched lethal injection that led to the resignation of the state’s top corrections official.
Two rounds of pentobarbital over a two-hour period could not kill the 50-year-old prisoner, but whether she survives to face another execution date remains to be seen, Pike attorney Stephen Ferrell said during an interview with CNN. “She’s still in the hospital, on a ventilator, critically ill. We don’t really know the prognosis yet and may not know for several days.”
Doctors at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have not explained how Pike survived the botched lethal injection at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville Sept. 30. One witness described multiple unsuccessful attempts to place IVs in her arms.
Christa Pike
Pike’s was the second failed execution attempt in Tennessee since May when Department of Corrections medical staff also had difficulty inserting IVs into the arms and chest of Tony Carruthers. Gov. Bill Lee granted Carruthers a one-year stay of execution as a result of the ordeal.
Attorneys have not visited Pike in the hospital and are not in contact with her medical staff because she granted power of attorney to an undisclosed person, Ferrell explained.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee speaks during a Republican Governors Association conference on Nov. 15, 2022, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack, File)
Gov. Lee suspended all executions through the end of the year, when his term ends, but neither the governor nor the state attorney general’s office have indicated if the state will set another execution date for Pike. Gary Wayne Sutton was scheduled for execution in December.
“One of the main things that will leave this up in the air for a while is the fact that we don’t know what the prognosis is, as in the long-term prognosis. If she recovers, she may not fully recover,” Ferrell said. “I think at the very least the governor should commute Ms. Pike’s death sentence to a life sentence.”
However, Republican U.S. Senator and Tennessee gubernatorial candidate Marsha Blackburn has been clear she would move ahead with executions quickly if elected in November. “Bring back the electric chair and deliver justice for these victims swiftly. As your governor, I will do just that,” she said.
Department of Corrections Commissioner Frank Strata submitted his resignation after Pike’s failed execution Oct. 3 and Lee announced he had accepted it, the Tennessee Lookout reported. “I appreciate his willingness to put the interests of Tennesseans first during this difficult moment,” the governor said.
Strada previously served as deputy corrections commissioner in Arizona where he oversaw three executions that observers said exceeded state execution protocols, CNN reported. He was hired by Lee in 2023 to improve Tennessee’s standards.
Laura Porter
Lee’s actions are long overdue, said Laura Porter, executive director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Death Penalty.
“Attorneys and community leaders across Tennessee have been trying for some time to get the governor and the administration to take seriously the huge problems with the competency of the state’s execution process. They were ignored. Hopefully, this is the beginning of accountability and an end to secrecy that enables these debacles,” Porter said.
Lee has now tapped former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton to lead a third-party investigation into Pike’s case and into the state’s lethal injection protocols. It was Stanton who investigated state executions in 2022.
Among other findings, the report Stanton released concluded the Department of Corrections routinely failed since 2018 to test execution drugs for endotoxins, potency and sterility, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
“‘The fact of the matter is not one TDOC employee made it their duty to understand the current protocol’s testing requirements and ensure compliance,’” the report says. Stanton found the department “‘viewed the lethal injection process through a tunnel-vision, result-oriented lens rather than provide the necessary guidance and counsel to ensure that Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol was thorough, consistent and followed.’”
Pike was sentenced to death in the 1995 murder of classmate Colleen Slemmer. Her attorneys have sought a reduction in her sentence to life in prison given that she was 18 at the time of the killing and had been the victim of rape and other sexual abuse since childhood. A federal appeals court agreed to consider the circumstances of her case but was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court the day of her scheduled execution.
Related:
Christa Pike and the moral case for ending the death penalty | Opinion by Nicole Wiesen
‘Bye bitch’ and other Bible Belt reactions to execution news | Opinion by Brad Bull
‘Bring back the electric chair,’ Tennessee GOP candidate urges after botched execution