Pike case: 911 calls show chaos at prison gate – second attempt still unclear
Newly released 911 calls show emergency crews waited more than half an hour after the failed execution of Christa Pike. Whether Tennessee will try again remains unclear.
Symbolic image · Photo: Kaldari / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain (cropped and resized)
Nearly two weeks after the failed execution of Christa Pike, recordings of 911 calls from 30 September have been released. At 8:40 p.m., a caller said "we've been carrying out an execution tonight" and asked for an ambulance, saying Pike was unconscious. A corrections department employee later said nobody from the facility had called, and another caller described the initial call as false. Responders were stuck at the gate without an access code; it took more than half an hour for them to be let in.
Whether Tennessee will make a second attempt remains unclear, CNN reported on Monday. Governor Bill Lee, whose term ends in January, has ordered an independent review led by former US Attorney Ed Stanton; it is uncertain whether it will be finished before he leaves office. Lee has never granted clemency to a death row inmate, according to the Death Penalty Information Center; on 7 October he granted the next inmate in line, Gary Wayne Sutton, a reprieve until October 2027. Pike's lawyers say she is struggling with concentration and memory and are seeking commutation to life in prison.
Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn, by contrast, wants the sentence carried out, if necessary in the electric chair, to "deliver justice for these victims swiftly". Democrat Jerri Green has said she would order a moratorium on executions. Legal scholar Austin Sarat said: "When the drugs begin to flow, the punishment has started." Pike killed her 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer in 1995. Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, said: "All I wanted was justice."