Independent inquiry ordered after failed execution of Pike, who was convicted of 1994 murder

Tennessee’s governor on Thursday said it was “deeply disturbing” that his state botched the execution of a death row prisoner who remained alive and snoring 40 minutes after receiving a double dose of the lethal drug that should have quickly killed her.

Bill Lee, a Republican, has suspended all executions in the state until at least the end of the year and ordered an independent inquiry after Wednesday night’s failed attempt to put to death Christa Pike, who was convicted of murder, at the execution chamber in Nashville.

Meanwhile, Pike, 50, remained in the hospital on Thursday afternoon. “We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment, but we do know that she is alive right now and receiving life-saving medical care,” Randy Spivey, one of her attorneys, said at an afternoon press conference.

  • answersplease77@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    this is too fucked up and sad. She should be let go if she even recovered which I doubt will happen. Also if you read her case, she is not someone who deserved the death penality… She grew up with severe and repeated abuse for years and untreated mental illness, and comitted that murder when she was 18 with 2 other people who peer pressured each other into it. The other 2 , a guy and girl got life without parole but they were just as if not more responsible. She served more than 3 decades and got tortured with chemicals into brain coma. It’s a fucked up unjust system to execute an 18 yr with such background

    • Lazylazycat@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Fuck, that’s so depressing. It’s wild that the US still executes people, but mentally ill teenagers who suffered abuse as kids? These people need help, not the death penalty.

      • Mirshe@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Oh the state kills a LOT of mentally disabled and unwell people. It’s almost always been used as a way to get “undesirable” poor/black/“inferior” people out of the world in the US, and that’s especially true with the South.

      • bstix@feddit.dk
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        2 days ago

        If she wasn’t insane before, she surely will be after 30 years in prison. It’s sickening to think about.

        What’s the fucking point? Private prison gets paid? Just give them the money. There’s no need to torture people to achieve whatever the prisons think they’re doing.