A woman sentenced to death for murder in the US state of Tennessee survived two attempts to administer a lethal injection and was taken to hospital on Thursday.
A woman sentenced to death for murder in the US state of Tennessee survived two attempts to administer a lethal injection and was taken to hospital on Thursday. According to her lawyers, this was the second failed attempt to carry out an execution in the state within a few months, prompting Tennessee to suspend executions for the remainder of the year. Just hours earlier, on Wednesday, the US Supreme Court had cleared the way for the execution of 50-year-old Christa Pike. If carried out, she would have become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. However, the attempt failed.
Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told The New York Times: “This is, in our view, the worst execution failure to date and unlike any other botched execution in modern history. There is no precedent for it.” The Tennessee Department of Correction said it had followed “every step of the state’s lawful and prescribed procedures” before Pike was transferred to an “outside medical facility.” Her lawyers said she was taken to a nearby hospital, but authorities have not yet provided any information about her condition. In a statement, her lawyers said: “Tonight, the state of Tennessee once again failed to lawfully carry out an execution.” Tennessee also halted the lethal injection execution of Tony Caruthers in May after medical staff was unable to locate a suitable vein. Following Pike’s failed execution, Governor Bill Lee ordered a “comprehensive and independent review.” He said: “The remaining scheduled execution this year will not be carried out.” He was apparently referring to the scheduled December 3 execution of convicted murderer Gary Wayne Suttles.
Pike was scheduled to be executed at 10 a.m. local time (1500 GMT) at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, where several witnesses, including journalists, were observing the lethal injection process. Kim Chandler, an Associated Press reporter, told CBS News that Pike was “clearly awake” when the execution began. She said that when the curtains of the execution chamber were closed for the final time, Pike was “loudly snoring and clearly alive,” even as members of the media were later asked to leave the facility. During a live stream, an ambulance with flashing lights was seen leaving the site, although it was not immediately clear whether Pike was being transported in it.
The execution began after the US Supreme Court ruled several hours earlier that it could proceed. However, liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. In their dissent, they wrote: “The Court’s decision unnecessarily prevents the lower court from properly considering Pike’s claim.” They added: “Worse still, the Court has granted this extraordinary relief solely to allow the State to execute Pike while litigation challenging her sentence remains unresolved in the lower courts.”
The case has renewed debate over the execution of people who committed crimes at a young age. Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend tortured and murdered 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer at a training camp for young people. The murder attracted national attention after Slemmer’s body was found with a pentagram carved into her chest, a symbol often associated with Satanism. Pike’s lawyers argued that her young age at the time of the crime and her mental health problems should be taken into consideration and that she should be granted clemency. In their clemency petition, her lawyers wrote: “She was just 18 years old at the time of the offense and suffered from severe mental illness.” The petition was submitted to Governor Bill Lee, but he declined to intervene.
The US Supreme Court had also rejected a request on Tuesday to halt the execution. The petition argued that Pike’s history of sexual abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and a blood disorder would make the lethal injection cause her “unnecessary suffering.” Independent UN human rights experts had urged the US government and Tennessee authorities to “immediately halt” the execution and commute her death sentence. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, only 18 women have been executed in the United States since 1976. However, at least 1,682 people have been executed in the US over the past 50 years. Of these, 34 percent were Black and 8 percent were Latino. Numerous studies and investigations have found that the death penalty is applied disproportionately along racial lines, with racial minorities facing the punishment at significantly higher rates. There is also an enduring risk of judicial errors. According to the United Nations, the global trend is moving toward abolition of the death penalty. Of the UN’s 193 member states, 170 have either completely abolished capital punishment or stopped carrying out executions.
