Christa Pike is back behind bars after botched execution, but her ultimate sentence faces a new test
If Christa Pike's recovery from two doses of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital has left her mentally impaired, she could be spared from her death sentence, according to a leading expert on capital punishment in the United States.
"Her attorney stated that she still seems a little confused about things and is not clear on, doesn't have a clear memory of what happened to her," said Fordham Law Professor Deborah Denno, a leading expert on capital punishment. "If that continues, that it could be very difficult for the state to execute her for that reason alone. In other words, you have to understand why you're getting a punishment and also connect that to whatever crime you committed."
She added, "We also don't execute people who have intellectual disabilities."
Courts have barred executions of intellectually disabled inmates as well as prisoners whose cognitive impairments leave them unable to understand why they are being executed, Denno told Fox News Digital, pointing to a 2019 Supreme Court ruling involving an inmate with dementia who could not remember their crime.
Pike was scheduled to be put to death on Sept. 30 after the Supreme Court vacated a last-minute stay. She was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville, a classmate she knew from a vocational school called the Jobs Corps Center.
Now, her fate is unclear. There are a few options, but state officials have not yet publicly announced their plans.
One option is that Gov. Bill Lee could commute her sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He's already put a moratorium on executions in the state for at least the rest of the year. But even so, Denno said a commutation from the governor is a long shot.
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If state officials seek another death warrant, that would likely face another court battle, she said.
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"It could go up to the Tennessee Supreme Court, could make that decision of whether she's going to get life in prison or whether there's going to be another execution or attempted execution," she said. "If there's going to be another attempt at an execution, that could go several ways as well."
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One potential argument from Pike's lawyers could be a double jeopardy claim, Denno said.
"In other words, that she has already received the state's punishment — from A to Z, they injected the drugs, she received the drug, they did everything they needed to do to actually execute someone — and she just simply didn't happen to die," Denno said. "But that's on the state and how they chose to do this — or their incompetence."
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That argument would need to be tested in court, and if it fails, the next question is what kind of execution would she face the next time around?
"Are you gonna try to use lethal injection again? I think her attorneys have the best argument we've ever seen that that was cruel and unusual, in which case Christa Pike did ask for two other potential methods of execution: hanging and the firing squad," Denno said. "So they could go in that direction."
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In the meantime, Pike has been released from the hospital and is back in prison after what her attorneys described as a "remarkable" physical recovery. She is the only known person to survive a lethal injection attempt in the modern era.