Christa Pike's botched execution sparks debate on death penalty: 'This has to stop now'
Following the failed execution of death row inmate Christa Pike, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said an investigation is needed to determine what went wrong. The case has drawn reactions from pro-life advocates and from both opponents and supporters of the death penalty.
Pike’s execution on Wednesday did not go as planned. She remained alive after receiving two syringes of lethal injection chemicals. State officials later told the Tennessee Supreme Court that Pike was being taken to a hospital for medical care.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow Job Corps student.
Advocates such as Laura Porter, executive director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Death Penalty, had urged Lee, a Republican, to suspend executions after the botched execution of Tony Carruthers in May.
“Since the botched execution in May of this year, people from diverse political backgrounds across Tennessee have called for a pause in executions to examine the problems with the execution process,” Porter said in a statement provided to The Christian Post.
“These pleas were ignored. The state of Tennessee has shown the world it cannot be trusted to implement capital punishment in a way that preserves human dignity and the rule of law,” she continued. “This has to stop now.”
Lee has ordered an investigation into Pike’s failed execution and postponed the Dec. 3 execution of convicted killer Gary Wayne Sutton.
“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective,” Lee said. “I have ordered a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred.”
Responding to Pike’s failed execution, pro-life advocate Lila Rose argued that a person can be conservative and still oppose the death penalty in modern America.
“If conservatism includes skepticism of bloated, fallible, and sometimes corrupt government power, there is a strong conservative case for refusing to give the state its most ultimate and irreversible power: executing a human life,” Rose wrote in a Friday X post.
Rose, who founded the pro-life group Live Action, called the death penalty “both unnecessary and inhumane” in an earlier X post about Pike’s failed execution. She argued that the risk of mistakes in carrying out executions and the existence of maximum-security prisons make the death penalty unnecessary.
Former Virginia state Del. Nick Freitas, a pro-life Christian, disagreed with Rose and pointed to the Israelites as an example.
“The Israelites had less technology and fewer processes available at the time of the writing of Leviticus and yet God still saw fit to institute the death penalty,” Freitas wrote in a Thursday X post. “One can have concerns about process without declaring those who support the death penalty to be inhumane.”
In a response to Freitas, Rose said she does not believe people who support the death penalty are inhumane. Instead, she said, the death penalty itself is inhumane “in a nation where we can effectively secure violent offenders and prevent them from harming others.”
“The ancient Israelites did not have the prisons we have today, which made the death penalty acceptable under those circumstances, as a means of protecting the public from the criminal,” the Live Action founder argued. “But the Bible doesn’t mandate the death penalty for modern America. Today we have the ability to imprison violent offenders for life. Taking their lives is unnecessary to protect the common good.”
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America and Students for Life Action, wrote in a Thursday X post: “If you are against the death penalty for convicted criminals, you should be against the death penalty (i.e. abortion) for innocent babies.”
