NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Gov. Bill Lee has indicated he does not plan to step in on Christa Pike’s death sentence, a month after Tennessee tried and failed to carry out her execution by lethal injection.
Lee told reporters this week that Pike remains in custody under state law and that he expects her sentence to stay as it was unless a court decides differently. Her lawyers have asked the governor to reduce the sentence to life in prison without parole because of the failed attempt.
The state went ahead with the execution on Sept. 30 once the U.S. Supreme Court had lifted a last-minute stay. Pike, who is 50, was given two doses of pentobarbital but survived, and she was taken to a hospital with arms her attorneys described as swollen, burned and blistered. She was unconscious and on a ventilator before regaining the ability to talk on Oct. 6. Her lawyers said she was released Oct. 10 and returned to the Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, her home for upward of three decades.
Her legal fight is also playing out in chancery court in Nashville, where Pike has sued Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. A hearing set there for Oct. 23 was taken off the docket after both sides gave up oral argument, and the judge will rule on the state’s request to set a deadline for Pike to amend her complaint based on the written filings.
Pike was 18 when she was charged in a 1995 killing of another young woman enrolled with her in a federal job-training program in Knoxville. Jurors found her guilty in 1996. On appeal, the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld both the conviction and the death sentence. Had the execution gone forward, she would have been the first woman put to death in Tennessee since 1820.
Lee has halted executions for the rest of the year while the state works out what went wrong, and the Pike attempt was the second execution this year to go awry in Tennessee. The head of the Department of Correction has resigned and is due to leave by the end of October, and Lee said he expects to name a replacement within days. Whether the state can or will try again with Pike is likely to be settled in court rather than by the governor.
Section: More Nashville TN crime news
Filed under: Nashville TN Crime News
