Tennessee's governor has suspended executions after Christa Pike's lawyer said the state's failed lethal injection execution attempt has left her in a critical condition. Bill Lee, the Republican state governor, has suspended all executions in the state until at least the end of the year and ordered an independent inquiry.
Critical Condition and Witness Accounts
Randy Spivey, one of Pike's attorneys, said: “We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment, but we do know that she is alive right now and receiving life-saving medical care. She is in a critical condition.”
Catherine Sweeney, a reporter at the Nashville Public Radio WPLN, witnessed the execution attempt. She said: “They went through two rounds, and she was still breathing at the end. She was very ragged. She lifted her head up and was looking around. At one point, she said … there was a spot that was burning and hurting, and asked if that was normal. None of it was normal.”
Background and Legal Action
Pike was convicted of the brutal 1995 killing of Colleen Slemmer, alongside her then boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp. Lee said he had not yet spoken to Slemmer’s family after the failed execution.
Leading voices on the death penalty in the US have told the Guardian that the failed execution was such a violation of the constitutional prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment” that all judicial killings should be halted nationwide.
