Tennessee judge orders preservation of execution chamber evidence
Christa Pike is “up and walking” in hospital, more than a week after she survived two doses of pentobarbital in a failed Tennessee execution attempt on 30 September, a member of her legal team told the BBC. Pike, 50, was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Surviving two injections of the lethal drug has been described by experts as unprecedented.
The latest update on Pike’s condition came late on Wednesday from lawyer Stephen Ferrell, speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Ferrell said he had not spoken to Pike directly but had been told she was moving around her hospital room. “She is up and walking for the first time today, but just around the room, not very far,” Ferrell said. Of her mental state, he added: “I think it’s kind of good and bad. Good that she is fairly with it, but she’s also somewhat foggy. She can lose her train of thought really easily and forgets where she’s going.”
In the latest updates given to the BBC, Ferrell said Pike was continuing to experience the after-effects of the drug pentobarbital, which prison staff injected into her body in two doses during the scheduled execution on 30 September. As of late on Tuesday, she had been “fairly well,” Ferrell told the BBC. Of her physical condition, Ferrell said: “What’s been described to me is that physically there’s quite a bit going on, that her arms are very injured and she’s not able to use them very much.” Ferrell said much remained unknown about what happens next. “I assume [the situation for Pike] will keep improving, but there could be some permanent damage. We don’t know that yet,” he said. Earlier updates from her team said Pike was awake and speaking but experiencing “anger and confusion,” and she had been handcuffed to her hospital bed. She was initially unconscious when taken to hospital after the execution was halted and was declared to be in a critical condition. Ferrell said the team wanted Pike to receive psychological support, since that “clearly is necessary now.”
The Pike case has now entered what the BBC called uncharted territory; Pike is believed to be the only person to have survived an execution attempt by lethal injection. Ahead of the scheduled execution, her legal team had warned that Pike had a condition that would make the injection method difficult.
Pike was 18 and her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp was 17 when, in 1995, they beat, tortured and killed Slemmer, whom they had met at a job training camp for troubled teens. Shipp was spared the death penalty because he was not legally an adult when the crime was committed; he remains in prison.
In a court hearing on Wednesday, Tennessee Judge I’Ashea Myles ordered that “anything that was in the actual room needs to be preserved and maintained,” including IV lines and syringes, as well as waste like packaging, inserts and labels. The judge also demanded documentation on Pike’s psychological condition before, during and after the execution attempt and advised the state to take “special care” not to misplace or accidentally delete any information that may be pertinent to the case. The BBC reported that the preserved evidence could lay the groundwork for a future lawsuit against the state. Asked during the hearing whether the state intended to reschedule Pike’s execution, the state attorney general said he did not know.
Pike’s legal team opposes any new attempt by state prison authorities to follow the same approach and is calling on Governor Bill Lee to downgrade Pike’s punishment to life in prison without parole.
Lee has ordered a pause on all Tennessee executions for the rest of the year, saying he wants answers about what went wrong. The state’s prisons chief is resigning after the failed execution.
Among those who had pushed for Pike to be put to death was the mother of Slemmer, who called the failed execution a “mess.” Senator Marsha Blackburn, the Republican candidate for state governor in next month’s election, said: “Bring back the electric chair.”