Christa Pike, the death row inmate who survived two lethal injections in Tennessee, is “still alive” but in critical condition, announced Thursday 1er October his lawyers, the day after the spectacular failure of his execution. Witnesses cited by American media claimed that Christa Pike, convicted of murder, continued to breathe and snore audibly after receiving the two injections supposed to kill her.
“What we’ve been told is that she’s in critical condition,” one of her lawyers, Randy Spivey, said at a news conference, urging Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, to “commute Christa’s sentence now.”
“After enduring more than 20 years of solitary confinement and a complete attempt to kill her by lethal injection, Christa is the person who has suffered the greatest punishment in the history of the death penalty in the United States,” he argued.
Suspension of executions
Tennessee suspended executions until further notice and ordered an investigation after the failed execution Wednesday evening of Christa Pike, 50, who was to be the first woman put to death in more than 200 years in this Southern state.
“We take no satisfaction from the fact that we were right, but the concerns raised by Christa Pike turned out to be well-founded: difficulty accessing veins, ruptured veins, degraded pentobarbital, lack of emergency medical care when things inevitably go wrong, all under the aegis of a protocol which remains shrouded in secrecy,” the lawyers denounced earlier.
The United States Supreme Court, with a conservative majority, authorized the execution of Christa Spike, 50, on Wednesday, overturning a stay granted in the morning by a federal appeals court.
An hour before the time initially scheduled for the execution, this court of appeal wanted to give itself time to decide on the admissibility of a defense appeal aimed at taking into consideration the sexual violence suffered in her childhood by Christa Pike. Violence that the State of Tennessee recognized for the first time during a hearing in August, without changing its position.
Convicted of murder
The last execution of a woman in the United States dates back to that, in 2023 in Missouri (central), of Amber McLaughlin, who was also the first transgender woman to be executed in the country.
In total, 18 women have been executed in the United States since the reestablishment of capital punishment in 1976, or barely more than 1% of executions, according to the specialized observatory Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC).
The execution of Christa Pike was to be the 30th since the start of the year in the United States, including 16 in Florida (southeast). All were carried out by lethal injection.
Also readIn Idaho, the execution of a convict by lethal injection stopped at the last minute
The Republican governor of Tennessee (south), Bill Lee, on Monday rejected requests for Christa Pike’s sentence to be commuted despite calls from numerous human rights organizations, including Amnesty International.
Christa Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, 19, a fellow student at the Job Corps training program in Knoxville, when she was 18, in a romantic rivalry case.
Her two accomplices, also teenagers, her boyfriend at the time, aged 17, and another young girl aged 18, escaped the death penalty. The first was sentenced to life imprisonment and the second to a suspended sentence in exchange for her testimony against the other two.
Christa Pike’s lawyers claimed that her defense during her trial in 1996 had not invoked the mitigating circumstances from which she should have benefited, in particular the trauma and violence, particularly sexual, suffered since a young age.
She was diagnosed late with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress caused by this violence.
At the beginning of September, experts commissioned by the UN called for the execution to be suspended and his sentence to be commuted.
Also readUnited States: Marcellus Williams executed in Missouri despite doubts about his guilt
In total, 47 executions took place in the United States in 2025, compared to around twenty per year for the past decade, the highest level since the 52 recorded in 2009.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 American states. Three others, California, Oregon and Pennsylvania, observe a moratorium on executions by decision of the governor.
With AFP
