Pike case: Governor Lee expects death sentence to stand
Four weeks after the failed execution in Tennessee, Governor Bill Lee has commented on the sentence's future: it will likely stay as it is – unless the courts decide otherwise.
Symbolic image · Photo: w_lemay / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped and resized)
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee expects Christa Pike's death sentence to stand after her failed execution. Asked whether the state would try again or commute her sentence to life in prison, the Republican said on Wednesday, according to WSMV: 'I suspect her sentence will be the same as before unless determined otherwise by the courts.' He added that she is still incarcerated under the laws of Tennessee. Pike was given two doses of the execution drug on 30 September and survived. Lee had earlier denied her clemency request.
After several days in hospital, Pike is back at the women's prison in Nashville. According to WSMV, she can now speak in full sentences and walk on her own. Lee has paused all executions through the end of the year; former US Attorney Ed Stanton is leading an independent review, with no findings yet. Corrections Commissioner Frank Strada leaves office at the end of October, and Lee expects to name a replacement within days, WSMV reported. In early October a Nashville court ordered all evidence related to the execution attempt to be preserved.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of Colleen Slemmer; she was 18 at the time and is the only woman on Tennessee's death row. Supporters of the death penalty point to the gravity of the crime against the young woman. Pike's lawyers, by contrast, call the state's conduct 'cruel' and see a manifest violation of her constitutional rights; they say they had warned in advance of medical risks. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, no other prisoner in the modern era has survived the administration of lethal-injection drugs.