US death row inmate receiving 'life-saving care' after botched execution
Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike is in critical condition following a failed execution attempt by lethal injection. Her legal team is calling for a commutation of her sentence, citing the trauma of the botched procedure.
Why it matters
The case reignites the ethical and legal debate surrounding the death penalty and the constitutionality of repeated execution attempts.
CHRISTA PIKE IS in a critical condition and receiving “life-saving care” after the Tennessee inmate survived two attempts to execute her using lethal injection, her lawyer has said.
The 50-year-old was whisked from a prison execution chamber to a hospital on Wednesday night , still alive despite two deadly doses of pentobarbital, a short-acting barbiturate that is used to treat seizures.
“What we have been told is that she is in critical condition, receiving life-saving care,” Randy Spivey said in a virtual news conference on Thursday afternoon, declining to provide further details.
He urged Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, who had denied a clemency request earlier in the week, to scrap Pike’s death sentence and commute it to a life sentence.
The case had already attracted scrutiny before the botched attempt as Pike would have been the first woman put to death in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
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21 other newsrooms covered this event. We read each version separately.
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