Whether you support or oppose capital punishment, one thing is clear: we sure are inept and incompetent in administering it! The Volunteer State just tried, and failed, to execute Christa Pike, 50, for a gruesome murder she committed when she was 18.
She was pleading for her life, which could have been another twenty or thirty or forty years locked in a cell for twenty-three hours a day. To me, that would be a fate worse than death, but I suppose it’s too easy for me to say, since saying it does not put me in the execution chamber.
🚨 UPDATE: Christa Pike is reportedly now ON LIFE SUPPORT at Vanderbilt University Medical Center following Tennessee’s failed execution attempt.
According to WSMV, her attorneys say they still have not been able to see or communicate with her and do not know whether she will recover.
Attorney Randy Spivey says that after the second round of pentobarbital, Pike’s right arm turned purple and began blistering while she continued choking and struggling to breathe.
Her attorneys say they still don’t know whether the execution drug ever properly entered her bloodstream.
Whatever your feelings about Christa Pike or the death penalty, this execution attempt clearly did not go as planned.
After more than 30 years on death row, Tennessee now has some serious questions to answer about exactly what happened in that execution chamber.