Christa Pike survived an attempted execution. Whether Tennessee will try to execute her again may depend less on the law than on politics, according to a capital-punishment expert.
“That is going to be a political decision and not necessarily a legal decision,” said Corinna Barrett Lain, author of Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection. Lain, who was not involved in Pike’s case, spoke exclusively with Oxygen in an interview published Oct. 9. She noted that the Supreme Court ruled in 1947 that a state may make another attempt when an execution fails and the prisoner survives, meaning there is no clear legal obstacle to a second attempt.
Pike had spent roughly 30 years in prison for the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. She was scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection Sept. 30 at Tennessee’s Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, but remained alive and in critical condition after receiving two doses of pentobarbital.
Pike’s attorneys initially believed she was brain-dead. They later said she regained consciousness and began speaking and walking with assistance, describing her recovery as “medically unprecedented.”
Her mental competency could also influence whether Tennessee is legally permitted to schedule another execution.
Lain, who holds the George E. Allen Chair in Law at the University of Richmond, said the standard for competency is relatively low. Pike would need to understand that the state intends to kill her and know the reason; she would not necessarily have to remember the crime itself.
As Gov. Bill Lee investigates what went wrong during the failed execution, questions remain about Pike’s health and what lies ahead for her.
Pike’s case is unusual because the execution drugs were administered and she nevertheless survived, Lain said. But it is not the first instance in which a botched execution left a condemned prisoner alive.
Lain pointed to the 2022 execution of Alan Eugene Miller in Alabama, where officials struggled to establish intravenous access for the lethal-injection drugs.
“They punctured him 18 times,” Lain said, before officials abandoned the attempt. Alabama later executed Miller using nitrogen gas.
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Could Christa Pike Face Execution A Second Time After Botched Lethal Injection?
Lain said Pike could “absolutely” face a different execution method because Tennessee’s capital-punishment laws allow some death-row prisoners to choose between specified methods.
Between 2018 and 2022, Tennessee executed seven people, five of whom chose electrocution, Lain said. She described that method as “a gruesome, gruesome death.”
Witnesses have described the smell of burning flesh during electrocutions. Lain also said prisoners may bleed from their orifices, which is why a hood is placed over the condemned person’s face.
Some death-row prisoners have explained why they still select the electric chair.
According to Lain, they view both electrocution and lethal injection as torturous but believe electrocution may be faster. Death by electrocution typically lasts two to three minutes, she said, while the average one-drug lethal-injection procedure takes about 18 minutes.
The case has also renewed questions about whether lethal injection is truly the most compassionate execution method. Lain said its failure rate is twice that of any other method.
The public image of lethal injection often suggests a peaceful, sleep-like death. But Lain said the three-drug protocol used by states for the first 35 or 40 years included a paralytic, which could mask signs of suffering by preventing movement.
“You’re going to get this nice ‘drifting off to sleep’ look,” Lain said, “regardless of what is actually happening.”
Pike’s survival has exposed the risks associated with lethal injection and could fuel debate over the future of Tennessee’s only woman on death row.
“If I were behind those doors, I would be very nervous about, ‘Is this going to happen to me? What do we do when it does?’” Lain said, calling the episode “a public relations nightmare.”