Tennessee strapped Christa Pike to a gurney on September 30, injected her with pentobarbital twice, and failed to kill her. A week later she is up and walking around a hospital room, and the Republican running to be the state's next governor has a fix: "Bring back the electric chair."
A First in American Execution History
Pike, 50, was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. She and her then-boyfriend beat, tortured, and killed Slemmer, whom they had met at a job training camp for troubled teens. Nobody is arguing this was a gentle crime. It was monstrous, and the state of Tennessee decided the penalty was death.
Then the state couldn't deliver it. Pike survived two lethal injections, and experts described the outcome to the BBC as unprecedented. She is believed to be the only person ever to survive an execution attempt by lethal injection.
Let that sink in for a second. The state has one job in this process, the single thing it is supposed to execute flawlessly, and it flunked. Twice. In the same afternoon.
Up and Walking, Mostly
Stephen Ferrell, a member of Pike's legal team, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Pike is "up and walking for the first time," though only around her hospital room and not very far. He hadn't spoken to her directly. He was relaying what he had been told.
Her condition sounds rough. Her arms are badly injured and she can barely use them. Mentally she is "fairly with it" but also "somewhat foggy," he said, losing her train of thought and forgetting where she's going. She was initially unconscious and declared critical after being rushed to the hospital. Earlier updates from her team described her as awake, angry, confused, and handcuffed to her bed.
Ferrell said there could be permanent damage, but nobody knows yet. Her team wants psychological support for her, which he called "clearly necessary now." You think?
The Warning Label Nobody Read
Here's the part that should make every Tennessean's stomach turn. Pike's lawyers flagged ahead of the execution that she had a condition that would make the injection method difficult. They said so before the date. On the record.
The state went ahead anyway. Prison staff injected pentobarbital in two doses, and when it became clear she wasn't dying, they stopped and sent her to a hospital. Governor Bill Lee has since paused all executions in the state for the rest of the year and says he wants answers about what went wrong. The state's prisons chief is resigning.
Resigning is one word for it. Another is the sound of a man who knows what the evidence is going to show.
The Judge Wants the Syringes
At a Wednesday hearing, Judge I'Ashea Myles ordered Tennessee to preserve everything from the execution room. That means IV lines, syringes, and the waste, including packaging, inserts, and labels. She also demanded documentation on Pike's psychological condition before, during, and after the attempt, and told the state to take "special care" not to misplace or accidentally delete anything relevant.
A judge had to tell a state government not to lose the evidence of its own failed killing. Sit with that. That could lay the groundwork for a lawsuit against Tennessee.
Asked in court whether the state plans to try again, the attorney general said he didn't know. Pike's lawyers oppose any second attempt with the same method and are asking Governor Lee to commute her sentence to life without parole.
Marsha Blackburn Has a Campaign Slogan
Enter Senator Marsha Blackburn, the Republican candidate for governor in next month's election. Her contribution to the moment: "Bring back the electric chair."
There it is, folks. The state couldn't get a drug protocol right, so the proposed upgrade is a 19th-century device that cooks people. Nothing says serious governance like answering a grotesque failure with a more grotesque idea and putting it on a yard sign.
Slemmer's mother, who was among those pushing for Pike's execution, called the botched attempt a "mess." She's right, and she's the one person in this story who has earned the right to be furious without anyone scoring points off her.
The Dingo Take
Colleen Slemmer's mother wanted this over. Instead she got a week of headlines about a hospital room, a syringe evidence order, and a woman who was supposed to be dead learning to walk again. Whatever you think Pike deserves, her victim's family was promised finality by a state that couldn't produce it. They are living in the wreckage of a government's incompetence, and no senator's electric chair slogan gives them a single hour of peace back.
Then there's Pike herself. She is a convicted murderer who did something unspeakable at 18, and she is also now a person with damaged arms and a foggy mind who survived the state's attempt to kill her. Both things are true. A functioning justice system has to be able to hold both without flinching, and without improvising a bigger machine every time the first one fails.
Here's the question nobody running for office wants to answer. If Tennessee can't kill someone competently with warning, a paper trail, and a week of notice, why should anyone trust it to do it correctly at all? Pause the executions, preserve the syringes, and let the evidence do the talking. For once, the state might learn something it can't blame on the victim.
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