For the second time this year, the state of Tennessee attempted and failed to execute a Death Row prisoner. Christa Pike, who brutally killed a fellow teen in the 1996 "Job Corps Murder" and took a piece of skull as a trophy, remains alive today after two injections of lethal doses of pentobarbital. Now Governor Bill Lee has once again suspended executions while the state investigates what went wrong.
At least so far this morning, Pike remains alive and under medical care, although no one is sure what her medical and cognitive status might be:
According to an emergency motion to halt and stay Pike’s execution, Pike did not lose consciousness and still had a heartbeat after receiving the lethal injection doses. The motion also said she was audibly snoring.
The motion also mentioned that the curtains went down twice.
The petition is requesting the immediate stay of Pike’s execution and for her to receive immediate medical care.
Attorneys for Pike released a statement late Wednesday saying that Pike is being treated at a nearby hospital.
“Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution,” they said. “We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms. Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy.”
It's embarrassing enough to Lee and the state that it could not carry out an execution that it insisted would work properly. It's even more troubling when taking a previously botched execution earlier in the year – with the same doctor in charge:
It marks the latest failed attempt to execute an inmate on death row in Tennessee – and the second in four months by the same doctor.
In May, the execution of Tony Carruthers was abandoned after medical staff failed to establish IV access, a process that took over an hour.
Mark Fowler, the doctor who was involved in Carruthers’ attempted execution, also oversaw Pike’s — at this time — attempted death sentence.
The use of pentobarbital for executions has generated controversy before. Critics alleged that Tennessee had failed to update its stock and now relied on expired vials, calling into question whether they could even get an effective dose for an execution. The Biden Regency took pentobarbital off the approved list of substances used in federal executions. It also seems unnecessarily complicated; why not just use potassium cyanide, where small doses would produce a rapid and reliable death?
Pike herself wanted other options. Through her attorneys, she asked for an all-female firing squad or a hanging, perhaps with the Carruthers precedent in mind. The state apparently does not allow for those choices – a few do – although the electric chair may still have been an option. Tennessee does not allow it for recent death-penalty sentences, but it was still an option in 1996 when Pike committed her crime.
Governments do not necessarily owe murderers their choice of execution methods. However, they do owe a death to them and the victims of the crime rather than an extended, painful process that ends without any finality.
What's next? It might depend on whether Pike sustained brain damage in this attempt. No one is sure yet what her medical status is, and whether she remains competent to contest another warrant for execution. No governor will sign a death warrant for a prisoner who got brain damage from a previously botched execution. No governor would want that kind of publicity. Pike is likely to end up with a commutation.
Apart from that, the state of Tennessee may not be prepared to conduct executions for a long while. They have to determine why they failed twice in four months with two different Death Row inmates, under the supervision of the same doctor. According to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI), the historical rate of "flawed" executions is around three percent, but most of those still resulted in the inmates' deaths. If so, the odds of it happening twice would be 0.09%, and Tennessee didn't do 100 executions, either. Something is very clearly wrong with this system, its mechanisms, its personnel, or all three.
Editor’s Note: The American people overwhelmingly support President Trump’s law and order agenda.
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