UN rights chief urges Tennessee not to retry Christa Pike execution

UN rights chief Volker Turk urged the US state of Tennessee not to make a new attempt to execute Christa Pike after she survived two lethal injection doses on Wednesday. Pike, 50, was being treated in a Nashville hospital, her lawyers said, in critical condition and receiving life-saving medical care as of Thursday afternoon. Tennessee has suspended all executions for the rest of the year while it investigates the failed attempt at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.freemalaysiatoday.com+1

Turk's appeal matters because it puts a UN human rights office behind the argument that Pike's case should end her death sentence, not resume it. The UN rights office said Pike's case lays bare multiple reasons why the death penalty should be abolished, and that key fair trial questions remain unresolved. This is new: a sitting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is publicly asking a US state to stop trying to kill a specific prisoner.

What the UN rights chief said

The UN rights office said in a statement that the prolonged suffering, physical and mental, arising from multiple failed execution attempts is abhorrent and cruel, and that there are key fair trial questions still unresolved. Turk called on the state authorities not to pursue any further attempt to execute Pike. The office added that it was troubled by the increase in the number of executions in the US, and that the death penalty has no place in any society.

The mechanism of the failure is now clear from what Pike's lawyers described. The execution team spent about an hour trying to establish an intravenous line, and attorney Randall Spivey said he personally counted at least seven needles, one of which appeared bent when pulled out. Prison officials then appeared to succeed with two syringes, but Pike's right arm turned purple and her skin blistered at the injection sites, suggesting the drugs entered arm tissue rather than the bloodstream.

After the second injection, Pike said her arm hurt and felt like it was about to explode, her lawyers said. Pike has a blood condition and had feared something would go wrong with lethal injections; her lawyers informed the state months earlier that she was likely to endure an agonizing death because of that condition and prior difficulties medical professionals had finding her veins. Tennessee switched to a one-drug protocol using pentobarbital, a powerful barbiturate, in 2024.

How the execution attempt unfolded

Pike would have been the first woman executed by Tennessee in more than two centuries. The US Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution on Wednesday, and Governor Bill Lee, a Republican, denied Pike's clemency appeal to commute her sentence to life in prison on Monday. Lee then ordered a suspension of scheduled executions in Tennessee for the rest of the year and a third-party review of the failed attempt.

Governor Lee told reporters there was no one that wanted what happened last night to happen, calling it a tragedy and deeply disturbing, and saying the people deserve better. Pike's attorneys called the execution cruel, torturous and predictable. Attorney Randy Spivey said the state of Tennessee has shown it is not capable of carrying out an execution consistent with basic human dignity, and that the governor must commute Pike's sentence now.cbsnews.com

Pike's lawyers said she was cooperative throughout, giving the executioners guidance on where to place the needle and wishing them loving kindness even after the first dose. Spivey said Pike's request for an all-female execution team appeared to have been honored. He also said her spiritual adviser was taken out of the room twice while she was clearly still alive, and that it took about seven minutes through six locked doors to reach a phone to alert her legal team.

What happens to Pike next

Pike was 18 in January 1995 when she, her 17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, and a third companion lured Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old classmate at their Knoxville Job Corps vocational center, into a wooded area where they tortured and killed her. Pike and Shipp confessed and both were convicted of first-degree murder. Pike's lawyers sought clemency citing her young age and mental health issues at the time of the killing.

The Death Penalty Information Center said Pike appears to be the first person known to have survived after execution drugs entered her body. Robin Maher, the center's director, called it the worst failed execution they have ever seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era. Most countries in the world and 23 US states have abolished the death penalty, and 18 women have been executed in the US since 1976.

Tennessee has no requirement to apply for a new execution date, and the electric chair remains another option available to the state, Pike's attorneys said. They reiterated their hope that her sentence would be commuted after what she has gone through. Neither attorney could say with certainty what happens next for Pike, and further details on her condition were not readily available as of Thursday afternoon.