Christa Pike’s legal challenge to Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol has been reopened by a judge, giving the death row inmate another opportunity to contest the state’s method of execution after her scheduled execution was halted following a reported botched procedure.
Pike, 50, was scheduled to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years on September 30. Instead, according to the original report, she became the first death row inmate in the United States to survive a lethal injection execution attempt.
Her legal team filed a complaint in January challenging Tennessee’s lethal injection procedure, arguing that the protocol was unconstitutional as applied to her. The complaint was subsequently dismissed by the Tennessee Supreme Court in May, according to court documents cited by the New York Post.
However, in an order issued on Thursday, Davidson County Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles ruled that the case should be reopened in Nashville. Myles found that Pike had demonstrated “extreme, unique, exceptional, or extraordinary circumstances” that could justify granting relief from the court.
The original complaint sought to prevent Tennessee from executing Pike by lethal injection. Her lawyers argued that the state’s revised protocol, which uses a single drug, pentobarbital, raised serious concerns about execution procedures, medical oversight and the potential for unnecessary suffering.
“Tennessee’s new lethal injection protocol, calling for a single drug (pentobarbital), is plagued with the same issues that have marked botched executions for decades: secrecy, intentional omission, inattention to detail, and untrained and unlicensed prison personnel attempting to fill medical role,” Pike’s lawyers wrote in their complaint.
The attorneys argued that the concerns were particularly significant because Tennessee was preparing to execute its only female death row inmate for the first time in approximately 250 years. They maintained that applying the protocol to Pike, given her individual medical circumstances, would violate both the United States Constitution and the Tennessee Constitution.
Among the concerns raised by her legal team were Pike’s physical characteristics, including what the attorneys described as small veins that could make inserting an execution needle difficult. The complaint argued that these factors needed to be considered when determining whether the state’s method could be carried out constitutionally in her case.
The judge’s decision to reopen the case does not, by itself, establish that Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol is unconstitutional or mean that Pike’s death sentence has been overturned. It allows her legal challenge to be considered again by the court.
Pike was sentenced to death for the January 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, her 19-year-old classmate at a Job Corps training programme. Pike was 18 at the time of the killing.
Her case has drawn renewed attention because of the legal dispute over Tennessee’s execution procedures and the circumstances surrounding the failed execution attempt described in the original report.
