Tennessee must end executions, not try again to kill Christa Pike

The Tennessee Department of Correction said its staff followed the established execution protocol. The cause of the failed attempt has not been established publicly, and we should not assume that staff broke the rules or that the drugs were defective. But even if the review bears out the department’s account, it offers little comfort. Pike remained alive after two reported doses and was taken to a hospital.

A credible review should establish what officials can verify about the attempt and make its findings public. It should also account for what cannot yet be explained. That is a demand for transparency, not a reason to treat an improved procedure as the answer to every objection to execution.

Tennessee has confronted an earlier failed attempt this year. In May, staff could not establish intravenous access, and the state called off the attempted execution of Tony Carruthers. The circumstances differ from Pike’s. Together, they give Tennessee ample reason to examine how it exercises this power, not just how it administers lethal injection.

An appeal was pending when Tennessee proceeded

Before Pike’s execution attempt, the Sixth Circuit voted 2-1 to stay it while considering her request to reopen proceedings. Her challenge concerns whether her allegations of childhood abuse were adequately considered in her case. Pike was 18 when she killed Colleen Slemmer; her attorneys have also argued that her mental health and age should matter to her sentence. The adequacy of the earlier consideration of her abuse allegations remains disputed.

The U.S. Supreme Court lifted the stay, allowing Tennessee to proceed. That decision did not resolve the underlying Sixth Circuit case. The state’s attorney general argued that a last-minute halt would hurt Slemmer’s family and reward what the state characterized as delay by Pike’s lawyers. That is the state’s argument, not a finding that Pike’s legal challenge lacked merit.

Courts must decide the legal questions before them. But we need not wait for an appellate ruling to make a judgment about public policy. If Pike’s arguments ultimately fail, Tennessee would still have to decide whether to attempt to execute her again. A legal path to an execution is not an obligation to carry one out.

Accountability does not require an execution

Slemmer was 19 when Pike killed her in 1995. Pike was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996. Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, has waited decades for that sentence to be carried out and wants the execution to proceed. Her position deserves to be heard plainly, not treated as an obstacle to an argument against the death penalty.

The strongest case for carrying out the sentence is that a court imposed it for a grave crime and that further delay prolongs the family’s wait. We take that case seriously. We also reject the premise that accountability depends on giving the state another chance to kill Pike. Tennessee should adopt a nonexecution sentence that keeps her imprisoned for Slemmer’s murder rather than attempt to execute her again.

Pike has expressed remorse for the killing. Her remorse does not undo Slemmer’s death or require Martinez to forgive her. Nor does opposition to execution require a claim that Pike is innocent. It requires a judgment about what punishment a state should be allowed to impose, including when the person it has tried to execute remains alive and her condition has not been made public.

Lee’s review may produce important answers about Wednesday. It cannot remove the central risk of capital punishment: Once a state succeeds in taking a life, it cannot reverse that decision. Tennessee lawmakers should end executions, and Lee should commute Pike’s death sentence rather than allow another attempt after her appeals are resolved.