The Story of Christa Pike Shows Why the Death Penalty is Unjust
Christa Pike in Court 2012. Source: CNN/Dipti Vaidya.
Less than a month after Tennessee failed to execute Christa Pike, she is back in a prison cell, and the state may re-attempt her execution. On September 30, it took executioners at least seven attempts to find a vein before injecting Pike with two lethal doses of pentobarbital. An hour after the injection, she was still breathing. As Caitlin Hunt reported, Pike was rushed to the hospital with both arms swollen, burned, and blistered. She spent days on a ventilator before returning to prison on October 10. The Death Penalty Information Center (DPI) said, “[This] is the worst [failed execution] we’ve ever seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era.”
Governor Bill Lee should commute Pike’s sentence to life in prison with the possibility of parole. What happened to Pike cannot stand as a possibility to occur once again. Her death sentence was shaped by an arbitrary age distinction and an unprepared lawyer. The courts ignored warnings that her execution could go wrong, and now the state is likely free to attempt it again, despite already subjecting her to gratuitous pain. Pike’s case is not an exception; it illustrates why the death penalty cannot be maintained as a just punishment in the United States. Who the state murders depends on arbitrary factors. Carrying it out can lead to torture that no jury could ever sanction. And, when it is exacted on an undeserving individual, it can never be undone.
Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp tortured and killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995. The crime was undoubtedly horrific. Shipp, who was 17, was legally ineligible for the death penalty and received life with the possibility of parole. Pike, who was only a few months older, became the youngest woman ever sentenced to death in the modern era. Roper v. Simmons established that people under 18 at the time of their crimes cannot receive the death penalty. The law draws a strict line, even though brain development happens gradually and is not complete until individuals are at least 25 years old.
Not only was Pike only 18 when she was sentenced to die, but as a child she was a victim of significant sexual abuse and neglect. As a toddler, she was raped by her grandmother's boyfriend; at eleven she was violently attacked and raped by one of her neighbors, and when she was seventeen she was raped by a stranger on the side of the road. Her family completely neglected her, forcing Pike to deal with trauma and undiagnosed mental illness alone.
During her trial, her attorney was completely unprepared and failed to present any information about her history of abuse and mental illness, despite the evidence being available at the time. It is impossible to know whether a better lawyer would have achieved a different result for Pike, but it is undoubtable that the jury should have heard her story before sentencing her to death.
The quality of legal representation is well documented to have a significant impact on sentencing outcomes for defendants, especially in death penalty cases. DPI has found that more than 200 death sentences were imposed in Philadelphia, PA, in cases where defendants were represented by underfunded and inexperienced court-appointed lawyers. Simultaneously, no one represented by the Philadelphia public defender’s specialized homicide unit ever received the death sentence. In the same city, with the same courts, defendants facing similar charges received extraordinarily varied outcomes. Pike’s lawyer failed to provide her adequate defense when her life was at stake, and one cannot claim to justly punish if there is any relationship between the government's exaction of death upon its own citizens and the quality of representation of the accused.
The Court was aware of the potential for disaster in Pike’s execution. Months prior to the injections, her lawyers argued that her thrombocytosis, PTSD, and small veins created significant risk of increased pain during the injection. The Tennessee Supreme Court rejected Pike’s claims, and on the day of the execution the US Supreme Court voted 6–3, without explanation, to lift the stay a federal appeals court had granted hours earlier. As Caitlin Hunt reported, the physician who oversaw her execution testified that he had not performed a central line procedure in twelve years, and he currently holds no hospital privileges.
Although Pike committed a horrific crime in 1995 and was convicted of attempted murder for assaulting a fellow inmate in 2001, those who believe she deserves to die cannot deny that no jury sentenced her to be tortured. She is already enduring the consequences of Tennessee’s attempt, and the state must correct its mistake given that she had already warned the courts of the potential for this situation.
The law may allow Tennessee to attempt to execute Pike again. In 1947, in Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that Louisiana was allowed to make a second attempt to execute Willie Francis after his first electrocution failed.
The Court excused the failed electrocution because it was an “unforeseeable accident.” Pike's lawyers made it clear to the courts the risks associated with injecting her. In Resweber, Justice Burton, writing for the four dissenters, warned that “the intent of the executioner cannot lessen the torture or excuse the result.” If the Court follows Resweber and allows Tennessee to try again, the state is responsible for correcting the pain it has subjected her to rather than doubling down. Just because an action could be legal does not necessarily mean it is just.
When the Court allowed Louisiana to retry its failed attempt, one of the majority justices expected Francis to be granted clemency, which would have allowed the state to show mercy to someone enduring the consequences of its own mistake. The justice was wrong. Pike has already experienced immense physical and mental trauma—first from those around her as a child, and now from the state that she calls home. Governor Lee now has the chance to redress.
Commuting her sentence would not erase the horrific death of Colleen Slemmer or end her family’s grief, and it would not prevent Pike from being held accountable. She would still spend the majority of her life locked in a cell, and would never forget the trauma that the state had already imposed on her.
Yet unfortunately, Pike’s case is not an anomaly. In May, Tennessee failed to establish a backup IV during the execution of Tony Carruthers, and DPI has tracked at least eight botched lethal injections since 2019. Since 1973, 203 people have been exonerated from death row. The United States justice system is imperfect and can still produce incorrect results. Thus, an irreversible punishment like capital punishment cannot exist in a system that makes mistakes often.
Regardless of what Governor Lee decides, mercy for Pike alone is not enough. Her case merely illustrates why the death penalty cannot be maintained as a just punishment. Who the state kills can rest on a few months of age or the quality of a defendant’s lawyer. Imposing it can fail and subject someone to the torture that Pike endured. Most consequentially, when the wrong person is convicted, nothing can reverse the injustice. As long as what happened to Christa Pike is possible, one cannot claim to live in a society that punishes justly.