The botched execution of Christa Pike by the state of Tennessee is unlikely to spark a broad move to restrain the use of lethal injection as a means of carrying out the death penalty in the United States, according to capital punishment researcher Serene Singh.
“So it could be the case that for a little bit of time, we see less lethal injection as a required protocol for a state. I do imagine that that can happen, especially as a result of the scrutiny that is being received by Tennessee,” said Singh, a University of Oxford PhD and human rights advocate. “But I don't imagine that lethal injection is going to be off the books.”
Singh said she believes states that allow the death penalty will instead look for a new combination of drugs that provide ‘more guaranteed results’.
Pike, sentenced to death for a 1995 murder, awoke ‘angry and confused’ in a hospital this week, with a long recovery ahead after surviving Tennessee's botched attempt to execute her, her lawyers said on Wednesday.
The 50-year-old inmate was taken from the execution chamber at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution to a Nashville hospital a week ago, unconscious and critically ill, with severe arm injuries after two injections of the barbiturate pentobarbital failed to kill her.
Singh said Pike's case could prompt renewed scrutiny of the decision to proceed with lethal injection despite concerns about her medical condition.
“Her attorneys had filed this long before that there's going to be serious complications with something like a lethal injection in Pike's case uniquely because of the medical challenges she had,” Singh said. “So as a result of the state determining that that would not be something they would consider, they would not be changing the method of execution, even though they had medical evidence to suggest that this would be in fact cruel punishment.”
Pike is the first person known to have survived a ‘completed execution attempt’ in the US, her lawyers said, describing the incident as a violation of the Constitution's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.
Singh said Pike's case could trigger renewed discussion and legal action over whether such executions should be considered cruel and unusual.
“Is it the case that the death penalty is cruel and unusual? And also, what is the due process that we are allowing for when we are executing individuals, when we're putting them to the sentence of death?” Singh asked. “There's been very important jurisprudence in both of those domains that have importantly allowed for the restriction of the death penalty.”
Pike was sentenced to death for her role as a teenager in the 1995 torture and murder of her 19-year-old schoolmate Colleen Slemmer.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has suspended all executions for the rest of the year while investigators examine Pike's failed execution and another botched attempt in May, when prison officials were unable to establish intravenous lines.
Pike remains seriously ill and shackled to her hospital bed, her lawyers said. She has pneumonia, cannot swallow or eat, and is unable to move her severely swollen hands and arms. It remains unclear whether she will regain her lost mobility.