After Pike case: one in three Americans back second try after failed execution
A Reuters/Ipsos poll shows a divided country: 33 percent want a new execution attempt, 39 percent life in prison. Tennessee has not yet decided how to proceed.
Archive image · Photo: Harrison Keely / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Three weeks after Christa Pike's failed execution in Tennessee, Americans are split on what should happen next. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll of 1,679 adults that ended on Monday, 33 percent say the state should try again if an execution fails. 39 percent say survivors should instead serve life in prison, while 26 percent are unsure (margin of error: two percentage points). According to broadcaster WVLT, 52 percent of Republicans but only 24 percent of Democrats support a second attempt on Pike.
Pike, now 50, was convicted in 1996 of the killing of Colleen Slemmer, who like her was a member of the Job Corps programme; the killing took place in Knoxville in 1995. On 30 September Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital and was taken to hospital; she has since been discharged and returned to her prison, according to reports. Governor Bill Lee paused the remaining executions this year and appointed former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton to lead an independent review; corrections commissioner Frank Strada announced his resignation. The department says it followed the approved protocol. Pike's lawyers are asking for her sentence to be commuted to life without parole.
Whether Tennessee will set a new date is unclear; a lawyer for the attorney general's office told a court in early October he could not say. There is a precedent in Alabama: Kenneth Smith survived an execution attempt in 2022 and was executed with nitrogen gas in 2024. Overall, the poll found 55 percent of Americans support capital punishment for the most serious crimes, down from 63 percent in a 2017 Reuters/Ipsos survey. 31 percent oppose it.