NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The United Nations’ top human rights official has called on U.S. authorities to make no further attempt to execute Tennessee death-row inmate Christa Pike after a failed lethal injection left her critically ill and unconscious on a ventilator, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office.
“Prolonged physical and mental suffering caused by multiple failed attempts to carry out an execution amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement issued Monday. He also raised concerns about fair-trial issues in Pike’s case.
Pike, 50, was taken to a Nashville-area hospital on Sept. 30 after Tennessee’s execution team at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution administered two full doses of the sedative pentobarbital and she remained alive, according to an emergency court motion filed by her lawyers on Oct. 2.
Her attorney, Stephen Ferrell, told CNN on Sunday that Pike had not regained consciousness and her prognosis remained unclear as doctors worked to clear the drugs from her system. “She’s still in the hospital on a ventilator, critically ill,” Ferrell said. “We don’t really know the prognosis yet and may not know for several days.” Ferrell warned she may never fully recover.
Pike’s legal team had warned state officials for months that her underlying medical conditions — including thrombocytosis, a blood-clotting disorder — and her small veins created a high risk of unnecessary pain and suffering during lethal injection, according to the filing. Her lawyers said the execution team made at least seven attempts to establish intravenous access, bending one needle to 90 degrees, before administering the two sets of syringes.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said its lethal injection protocol does not permit procedures beyond what was carried out and has not provided a detailed explanation for the failure.
The fallout has been swift. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee suspended all scheduled executions in the state for the remainder of the year, and the head of the state’s prison system announced his resignation. Ferrell has called on Lee to commute Pike’s death sentence to life imprisonment, citing the “torturous attempt” at execution after more than 30 years behind bars.
Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the 1995 murder of 18-year-old Colleen Slemmer, her former classmate in a Job Corps program. She was 18 at the time of the killing.
