After Christa Pike survived Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute her, experts said a second attempt could raise complex and largely untested legal issues.
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Christa Pike survived Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute her, leaving an unsettled question about whether the state will try again, which experts said could push Tennessee into legal territory that has not been clearly tested.
Pike, 50, suffered burns and blisters to her arms and her prognosis remains uncertain after executioners tried to give her two lethal doses of pentobarbital, according to her legal team. Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 beating and stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer.
Outgoing Republican Gov. Bill Lee has paused executions in Tennessee and ordered an outside review of the failed Sept. 30 attempt. His office did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment on whether Tennessee will attempt to execute Pike again.
Defense and penalty experts said the next steps could depend on multiple legal and medical hurdles, including whether Pike is mentally competent to be executed. One criminal defence attorney in Tennessee, Stephen Johnson, said, “Whether or not it would be lawful for the state of Tennessee to attempt to execute her again is a complex question that will take significant time, attention and analysis of her defense team, the prosecution team, the state government in Tennessee and multiple state and federal courts.”
Johnson said Pike regained consciousness almost six days after the failed attempt, and that her legal team believed she was brain dead. He said Pike was “angry and confused” after waking up and understanding what had happened. Johnson said her attorneys would likely pursue neuropsychological and forensic psychiatric evaluations and other medical tests to determine whether she is “now legally competent to even be executed,” and that any related disputes would likely involve “undoubtedly be significant litigation” that can take years.
Experts pointed to other troubled executions as partial comparisons but said Pike’s case is distinct. Jordan Steiker, co-director of the Capital Punishment Center at the University of Texas, said Pike’s case may be “uncharted territory” if Tennessee proceeds, because she “bore the brunt of lethal drugs,” rather than mainly facing the psychological trauma of an execution effort.
Steiker compared Pike’s situation to a historic case involving Louisiana, where 17-year-old Willie Francis survived an execution attempt in 1946 after an improperly prepared electric chair failed. In that case, the following year he was executed by electrocution after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a second attempt did not violate double jeopardy or constitute cruel and unusual punishment, reasoning in part that the first attempt involved a “malfunction.”
Experts also said they were not aware of a statute that explicitly bars a second execution attempt after a first one fails. John Mills, a lawyer who represents people facing the death penalty, said a key question would be whether a second attempt to execute Pike would amount to torture. Mills added that Pike’s lawyers had previously warned her medical conditions could make lethal injection agonizing, and said, “Facing her death a second time having thought she was going to die and then instead being tortured raises a strong claim that a second attempt to kill her would amount to torture violating the Eighth Amendment.”
Scope: International
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