Christa Pike, the Tennessee death-row inmate who survived a severely botched lethal injection, remained alive in critical condition Thursday evening, her attorneys said.
At least seven needles were reportedly used to deliver two doses of the normally fatal drug pentobarbital into the 50-year-old condemned woman’s veins Wednesday night. One needle was allegedly bent when it was removed from her arm.
Witnesses said Pike complained of intense burning, gasped and snored during the procedure—but did not die.
Even so, I find it difficult to feel sympathy for Christa Pike.
My compassion remains with the people she left behind.
On January 12, 1995, Pike was 18 when she reportedly told friends that she had killed a girl, according to court documents filed during one of her numerous appeals.
At her Knoxville vocational training school, she told a classmate that she had lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer into the woods and cut her throat six times.
Prosecutors said Pike viewed Slemmer as a romantic rival.
Christa Pike, the Tennessee death-row inmate who survived a severely botched lethal injection, remained in critical condition but alive, according to her attorneys
Pike told a classmate at her Knoxville vocational training school that she had lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer (above) into the woods and cut her throat six times
Pike told a friend that Slemmer had pleaded with her and her boyfriend—who was also convicted of murder—to stop, but they continued. She later admitted to police that, armed with a box cutter and meat cleaver, she slashed Slemmer’s back when the teenager tried to escape.
Investigators said Pike’s boyfriend carved a satanic pentagram into Slemmer’s skin. The attack lasted about an hour.
At school, Pike reportedly boasted that she had repeatedly struck Slemmer’s head with a piece of asphalt. According to a witness, she recounted the killing while dancing in a circle, smiling and singing, “la, la, la.” She then pulled a fragment of Slemmer’s skull from her pocket.
The following day, she showed the grisly keepsake to another girl and laughed about the blood on her shoes.
More than 30 years after Pike’s conviction for first-degree murder, May Martinez—the victim’s mother—was among the journalists and members of the public who witnessed Wednesday’s failed execution attempt.
Martinez is also a victim of the crime’s lasting consequences.
“I stood in front of that window and I watched her very, very carefully. I did not take my eyes off of her,” Martinez told People magazine. “I wanted her to remember who Colleen was and what they’ve done and never forget that thought, no matter where she goes.”
Martinez said Pike has never apologized for taking her daughter. “She has no remorse. She’s never had any remorse in 31 years,” the grieving mother said. “We can’t get justice for my daughter.”
Once again, I feel no sympathy for Christa Pike. The way some people have portrayed her as a martyr is deeply disturbing to me. Her lawyers are now arguing that her entire sentence should be set aside.
But it raises a difficult question: Is this truly what the pursuit of justice is supposed to look like?
As a public commentator, I have long questioned the death penalty and, ultimately, as a libertarian and an Eastern Orthodox Christian, I have decided that no matter how cruel or evil one human being can be, it should not be up to the state to execute them.
On January 12, 1995, Pike, then 18, bragged to her friends that she had just killed a girl, according to court documents presented at one of her many appeals
Pike produced a grisly souvenir from her pocket, a fragment of Slemmer’s skull (Pictured: Anthropologist Dr Murray Marks testifies about the wounds to Colleen A. Slemmer’s skull)
To me, opposing the death penalty is not about sparing the depraved, it’s about weighing the benefits of vengeance against its cost.
To those who argue that some people cannot be rehabilitated, that some crimes deserve the ultimate punishment and that Pike must be killed to remove a public menace from society, I say: Let her rot in prison.
I want her to grow old and frail contemplating her miserable life. In some ways, death is an easy way out for her. And when it comes to forgiveness that’s not my call. I am a believer. God will deliver the final judgement for Pike.
Really, much of the country has already concluded that the death penalty is anti-American.
Twenty-three states have outlawed the practice. Governors in another four states have halted executions, citing practical problems, like the difficulty in securing lethal injection drugs, as pharmaceutical companies have stopped producing them.
Even the states that continue conducting executions are wavering. If they were so committed they’d just line the inmates against the wall and shoot them. But, of course, that would be uncivilized.
And what about the doctors who are hired to participate in state-sponsored killing? Don’t they violate their Hippocratic Oath to do no harm?
The Tennessee doctor who oversaw the botched killing of Pike, Dr Mark Fowler, a contractor for the state’s prison system, was also present at the state’s last flubbed execution of kidnap and murder convict, Tony Carruthers, in May.
Among the gallery of journalists and citizens who watched Pike’s attempted execution on Wednesday, more than 30 years after her conviction for first-degree murder, was May Martinez, the mother of the victim in this case
The executioners in that case gave up trying to find a vein after several failed attempts and so Dr Fowler reportedly tried to establish a line to administer the drugs through Carruthers’s collarbone. That didn’t work either, yet Tennessee invites the Good Doctor back?
Which brings me to my final point, why in the world would a red-blooded American – a conservative, especially – grant the government the authority to kill its own people?
These folks can’t balance a budget, fill a pothole or agree on pretty much anything of substance, but we trust with mortal vengeance? No thanks.
Now, because of Tennessee’s bungling, we will no doubt hear the name Christa Pike for weeks, as her lawyers, the state and the real victims argue over what’s to be done next.
But I say true justice for Colleen Slemmer and May Martinez is Christa Pike behind bars and forgotten – forever.
