Christa Pike survived an execution attempt. Can Tennessee try again?
Northeastern University criminal law experts say the episode illustrates the gruesome and potentially inhumane realities of putting people to death.
The botched execution of a Tennessee woman this week has reignited debate over the role of the death penalty, and whether it is even possible to carry it out without inflicting the very suffering it is supposed to avoid.
“The application of capital punishment in the United States is flawed from beginning to end,” said Daniel Medwed, a university distinguished professor of law, “from who gets charged with the death penalty, who ultimately is sentenced to die, how the torturous post-conviction review process plays out, often in a fashion that leaves the prisoner on tenterhooks until the very last minute — as occurred yesterday — and then of course errors in the method of execution.”
Christa Pike, 50, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, survived two doses of pentobarbital, a barbiturate used to induce unconsciousness, during Wednesday’s scheduled execution attempt, according to the Associated Press.
Pike, the only woman currently on death row in Tennessee, was taken to an off-site medical facility, where her status remains unknown. State officials didn’t respond to a request for comment from Northeastern Global News on how the failure occurred and Pike’s current condition.
The Tennessee Department of Corrections said in a statement Wednesday that it had followed “every step” in the state’s execution protocol. But the botched execution marks the second time this year that Tennessee has been unable to bring a death penalty sentence to fruition.
The Tennessee Department of Corrections said in May that it had trouble establishing a backup IV line during the execution of Tony von Carruthers, a death-row inmate who was sentenced in 1996 in the murder of Sharon Ann Glass. Gov. Bill Lee subsequently granted him a one-year reprieve.
The state is now conducting a comprehensive “third-party review and investigation into the protocol” and pausing an execution scheduled for later this year, Lee told reporters on Thursday.
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Northeastern University criminal law experts say the episodes illustrate the gruesome and potentially inhumane realities of putting people to death — and maintain that, as a matter of practicality and principle, the death penalty has no place in the U.S. today. They note that public support for the death penalty has fallen substantially from its peak in the 1990s, but that 27 states still use it.
Since 2019, at least eight lethal-injection executions have been bungled, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit organization that tracks and analyzes the death penalty in the U.S.
The group defines a botched execution as one involving unanticipated problems or delays that arguably caused unnecessary agony or reflected serious incompetence. The center’s catalogue has since added additional failed attempts, including the attempt involving Carruthers earlier this year.
“Lethal execution is sometimes touted as a more humane method than, say, electrocution, but nothing about [Wednesday’s] events strikes me as remotely humane,” Medwed said.
With Pike now reportedly receiving medical care, questions remain about the status of her death sentence, and whether Tennessee can constitutionally attempt to execute her again.
Is there precedent for trying a third time?
Northeastern School of Law Professor Emeritus Michael Meltsner, one of the founders of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s anti-capital punishment campaign, pointed out that despite the “gruesome facts of many failed executions,” the U.S. Supreme Court has “never halted one after a prior attempt failed.”
In the most famous case dealing with the issue, Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, the court in 1947 allowed a second attempt, though a key justice “mistakenly expected the defendant would be granted clemency after the failed electrocution,” Meltsner said.
In the 1947 case, the Supreme Court allowed Louisiana to make a second attempt to execute Willie Francis after the first electrocution failed because of an equipment malfunction. The court rejected his claims that a second attempt would violate the Double Jeopardy or Eighth Amendment protections.
Tennessee renewed capital punishment in 1977 after overriding a veto by then Governor Ray Blanton, who had publicly opposed the death penalty. The state has since executed 17 men for murder, according to available statistics on U.S. executions.
“This suggests the state may try again to kill Christa Pike,” Meltsner said. He noted that “it is standard for officials to postpone an execution after a failed attempt.”
