Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee said he expects Christie Pike’s death‑sentence to remain unchanged after the failed execution last month. “Regarding the individual, Christie Pike, and her crime, she remains in prison in accordance with Tennessee law,” Lee told reporters. “I anticipate her sentence will stay the same unless the courts decide otherwise.” Pike, 50, was scheduled for execution on September 30, the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Instead, she became the first U.S. inmate to survive a lethal injection. Her attorneys have asked Lee, who will leave office in January, to commute her sentence, arguing that she has endured “more than any other person in the history of the American death penalty.” After the botched execution, Pike was rushed to a hospital following two doses of pentobarbital that were allegedly administered with at least ten needles. She remained unconscious for several days, and brain‑death was suspected, but she awoke on October 6. Pike is now housed at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, a former women’s prison in Tennessee, and her lawyers say she can speak in full sentences. The case stems from Pike’s 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, a fellow Job Corps participant, in Knoxville. Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, has said the state owes her a “big apology” and that she does not want any other child to suffer as her daughter did. In the wake of the failed execution, Governor Lee suspended all executions in the state until the end of the year and ordered an independent investigation into the incident. A judge recently reopened a civil action Pike filed against the use of lethal injection and directed the Tennessee Department of Corrections to preserve all evidence related to the botched execution, citing its potential relevance to future legal proceedings.
Article source: Večernji List | Image credit: Večernji List