Zendrah Bonnick, Asst. News Editor
On Sept. 30, Christa Pike was sentenced to death for the second time where she was given two doses of a lethal injection. The jury found her and her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp guilty of torturing and murdering Colleen Slemmer, their 19-year-old classmate in 1995. Shipp was sentenced to life in prison at the time of trial. He was a minor, a year younger than Pike, who was 18 at the time. Pike was sentenced to death in 1996; however, she survived after receiving a lethal injection on Sept. 30, 2026. Pike received and survived the sentence again, after receiving two doses of pentobarbital, later being placed on a ventilator and in critical condition after the failed execution.
In 2021, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In Pike’s request for clemency, she stated she was sexually assaulted by her mother’s boyfriend between the ages of 2-5. The request stated that Pike was raped at the age of 11 by her neighbor and again at 17 by an unidentified perpetrator. Her neighbor pleaded no contest, denying “immoral, improper, and indecent liberties [with a child].”
When requesting clemency, Pike’s attorneys stated.
“The governor now has an opportunity to protect a victim of child rape and correct the mistakes of the adults, institutions and systems that consistently failed Christa as a child.”
Governor Bill Lee denied the request for clemency on Sept. 28.
“After deliberate consideration of Christa Gail Pike’s request for clemency and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene,” Lee stated.
Globally, “74% of the world’s nations have abolished the death penalty in law or practice.” Two out of the 38 OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) nations, the United States and Japan, making the U.S. the only Western country to still use the sentence.
Lethal injection, contrary to popular belief, is one of the most painful forms of the death penalty.
“Today, there is compelling evidence that many people executed using lethal injection suffer severe physical distress and feelings of suffocation before their death. It is reported that pulmonary edema, a condition that causes a sensation of drowning, has been found present in 84% of autopsies conducted after lethal injection executions. Additionally, approximately 7.2% of all executions by lethal injection have been considered “botched,” making it the most error-prone execution method ever used in the United States,” The Death Penalty Information Center states.
While in the U.S. the practice is legal in 27 states, doctors typically do not administer lethal injections. One of the oldest documents in the profession’s history, the Hippocratic oath states, “I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.”
In accordance with this, the American Medical Association’s code of ethics states, “…as a member of a profession dedicated to preserving life when there is hope of doing so, a physician must not participate in a legally authorized execution.”
In a recent publication by NPR on Tennessee’s failed executions, which was published Sept. 28, prior to the failed execution of Pike, Dr. John Greer stated, “We [doctors] do not want to participate and should not participate in legally authorized executions.”
During the interview with NPR, interviewer and WPLN station member Catherine Sweeney gave context to Tennessee’s execution practices, “Under Tennessee’s protocol, other health workers, like nurses or paramedics, place IVs into the prisoner’s arms. If they can’t find a vein, a doctor must step in to insert a plastic tube, or central line, in a deeper vein,” Sweeney stated. Sweeney referenced another execution that failed from May of this year, in which a physician incorrectly inserted a central line into Tony Carruthers.
Sweeney later stated, “Tennessee is slated to execute a woman named Christa Pike on September 30. Her attorneys say she has a blood disorder that makes it likely she will need a central line,” Sweeney said.
The death penalty in America has been a large topic of debate among Americans, with the law banned in 23 U.S. states. It has a long history of also being given to members of marginalized communities, often used in cases where black people are exonerated posthumously after being wrongfully convicted – meaning that their name is cleared of their conviction after they were already executed.
“Black people are about 7½ times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder in the U.S. than are whites, and about 80% more likely to be innocent than others convicted of murder, according to a new report by the National Registry of Exonerations.”
In August of this year Pew Research Center shared a report on polling results on public opinion of the death penalty,
“About two-thirds of Americans (66%) now favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder, while nearly a third (32%) oppose it,” the center wrote.
The report went further in depth, describing specifics of people’s surveyed perspective on common justifications historically used for the death penalty, deterrence and justice.
“68% also see the death penalty as morally justified for those committing murder, while just 28% see it as morally wrong…But a 59% majority say the death penalty is not a crime deterrent; far fewer (39%) say that it is,” the center added.
Contrary to this, in 2009, the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 88.2% of scientists reported that the death penalty does not have a deterrent effect.
“88.2% of respondents do not think that the death penalty deters murder—a level of consensus comparable to the agreement among scientists regarding global climate.”
The justice rationale is harder to research due to it being subjective depending on how people define justice: punitive or retributive, or restorative and rehabilitative.