One of Christa Pike’s lawyers called on Tennessee’s governor to immediately commute her death sentence, sharing that she’s in critical condition following her failed execution.
“We don’t have much sense of her prognosis but we do know that she is alive right now and receiving lifesaving medical care,” Pike’s attorney Randy Spivey, who works for of the Tennessee Office of the Post-Conviction Defender, said during a virtual news conference on Thursday, October 1, according to USA Today and other news outlets.
“Christa has endured punishment greater than any other person in the history of the American death penalty,” Spivey said.
The attorney described Pike’s botched execution as “cruel,” “torturous,” and “predictable.”
Pike’s execution was delayed on Wednesday, September 30, after a federal appeals court issued a stay to prevent her death that morning, The Tennessean reported. The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled her execution could proceed and was given two lethal injections of pentobarbital.
Pike survived the injections, which she said caused her arm to feel like it would “burst open,” according to an eyewitness reporter for Nashville’s WKRN.
The reporter, Tori Gessner, recalled Pike’s comments at a news conference after the execution attempt.
Gessner said Pike “clearly still breathing and snoring” at one point.
The failed execution has led Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to halt all executions in the state and order a third-party review of what happened.
“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective,” Lee said in a statement Wednesday, The Tennessean reported.
“Therefore, the remaining scheduled execution will not be carried out this year,” Lee also said, referring to what was the upcoming December 3 execution of Gary Wayne Sutton.
Pike has been on death row since 1996 after she was handed the capital punishment for the 1995 killing of her Knoxville Job Corps classmate Colleen Slemmer, according to authorities. Pike was 18 when she killed Slemmer, who was 19.
She’s the only female death row inmate in the state of Tennessee.
On Thursday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, called on Tennessee officials to abandon further attempts to put her to death, according to an X post shared by UN Human Rights.
“The case of Christa Pike lays bare multiple reasons why the death penalty should be abolished,” the UN office wrote. “The prolonged suffering – physical and mental – arising from multiple failed execution attempts is abhorrent, and cruel. And there are key fair trial questions still unresolved.”
