Convicted murderer Christa Pike remains unconscious and on a ventilator four days after Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute her, and her attorney is now warning that she may never fully recover.
The punishment was supposed to be final. Instead, the state is now facing a medical crisis, a leadership shakeup and serious questions about how an execution went so badly wrong.
The Associated Press reports that doctors are trying to clear the massive dose of pentobarbital from Pike’s body. Attorney Stephen Ferrell said Sunday that, as far as he knows, she has not regained consciousness.
Her prognosis remains uncertain. Pike, now 50, has remained hospitalized since Wednesday night while doctors work to clear the powerful sedative from her body.
Ferrell said Pike’s condition could create new legal questions if she survives but is left unable to understand future proceedings or assist her lawyers. That is no small issue for a state that could face another attempt to carry out the sentence.
The state carried out two injections, but Pike did not die. A designated medical decision-maker who holds her power of attorney is controlling access to her medical information, so officials have released few details beyond her critical condition.
The immediate question is whether Pike can recover from the large quantity of pentobarbital already administered. The next question is whether Tennessee can legally try again if she survives with serious cognitive damage.
None of this changes why Pike was on death row.
She was 18 when she took part in the brutal 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Prosecutors said Pike and two others lured Slemmer to a secluded area near the University of Tennessee, where she was beaten, cut and killed in a jealous rage.
Slemmer’s family has already carried that horror for more than three decades. They should not be reduced to a footnote while the headlines focus on the woman convicted of killing her.
But the state also had a basic duty: carry out a lawful sentence competently, within its own rules, and without improvising when the procedure failed.
In a statement issued after the execution attempt, the Tennessee Department of Correction said every step of its protocol had been followed. The department also said the protocol did not permit any additional procedures after the two doses and that Pike was taken to an outside medical facility.
That explanation has not stopped the fallout.
The department’s position leaves Tennessee with an obvious problem: officials say the rules were followed, yet the execution failed and Pike remains critically ill. That makes the independent review more than a personnel matter; it is now a direct test of the protocol itself.
Corrections Commissioner Frank Strada resigned Saturday, and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee ordered an independent investigation led by former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton.
That review must be real. Tennessee owes the public a full accounting of the drugs, the timing, the medical decisions and the chain of command.
If officials followed the written procedure and still produced this result, then the procedure itself is broken. If they departed from it, the public deserves to know who made that call.
Compassion belongs first to Colleen Slemmer’s family. Accountability, however, does not disappear because the condemned committed a monstrous crime.
A government powerful enough to take a life must also be disciplined enough to follow the law and answer plainly when it fails.
Pike’s medical future is uncertain. Tennessee’s responsibility is not.
Featured image: Former Utah State Prison execution chamber, photographed by T Woodard and adapted under CC BY 2.0. License: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
This is a Guest Post from our friends over at 100 Percent Fed Up. View the original article here.
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[ H/T WLT Report ]
