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Christa Pike update: Legal expert on future execution attempt
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A legal expert has explained how Christa Pike could face execution again after her botched execution last week.
Pike was sentenced to death in 1995 for the murder of Colleen Slemmer, but she survived the lethal injection and now remains in hospital.
Christa Pike is in a bad condition in hospital
Pike, now 50, and her lawyers had complained before her sentence was set to be carried out that she may have trouble with the lethal injection process.
It's a controversial execution method to begin with, but Pike's team had argued that she had specific bodily features that could make it difficult.
So it proved.
After refusing her last meal, Pike was injected with pentobarbital and reportedly could be heard 'snoring'.
However, witnesses - including the mother of her victim - reported that the whole thing then went quickly downhill, and she wasn't killed as expected.
In fact, she asked doctors whether everything was going to plan, and witnesses had the curtains to the viewing room at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution raised on several occasions so that they could not see in.
Despite the huge doses of drugs she was administered, Pike remains alive, although the extent of the damage done is not yet known.
Now, a legal expert has offered their opinion on what could happen if Pike is brain-damaged, and the circumstances that could see her execution attempted again.
Legal expert reveals what could happen to Christa Pike now
Professor Deborah Denno, of the Fordham University School of Law in New York, has revealed one thing that could stand in the way of the state of Tennessee if they still want to execute Pike.
“She can’t be executed if she is brain injured and doesn’t understand the proceedings,” she said.
“The United States Supreme Court recognized in a case involving a dementia patient in 2019 that you can’t execute someone who’s not aware of the punishment that they’re going to receive."
Furthermore, Denno argued that Pike may 'have a strong argument for double jeopardy'.
The Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits double jeopardy, meaning no person can be prosecuted more than once for the same offense.
That would mean that Pike would have her sentence commuted to life in prison, or - more likely - life in hospital.
Pike's own lawyers had argued for her sentence to be commuted
Even before her execution attempt, Pike's lawyers had argued that her sentence be commuted.
They mentioned her long history of mental health issues, the fact that she had suffered trauma as a young woman and child from sexual abuse, and the fact that she was just 18 at the time of the murder.
Had her execution been successful, she would have been the first woman in 200 years to be executed in Tennessee.
Speaking to CNN yesterday, Pike's attorney Stephen Ferrell said: "We don't know what her physical state will be, but it is clear that she has endured a tortuous attempt at executing her, and we had already asked that the governor commute her for many good reasons.
"She's spent over 30 years in prison, most of that in solitary confinement, only to be taken out and not executed, but tried to execute her.
"We don't know right now, and we may never know, what kind of torture she endured during that process."
In a statement after the incident, a spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Corrections said: "The Tennessee Department of Corrections followed every step of the State's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General's Office.
"The lethal injection chemical in the protocol has consistently been effective, and the protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out this evening. Christa Pike has been transported to an off-site medical facility."