On 30 September, Tennessee attempted to execute Christa Pike, the only woman on its death row, for the 1995 murder of her classmate Colleen Slemmer. Earlier that day, the Supreme Court had overturned a lower court order pausing the execution. Pike was given two doses of the barbiturate pentobarbital, yet she survived, leaving her unconscious on a ventilator with severe injuries to her arms. Six days later, her lawyers announced that she was awake and speaking. It was Tennessee’s second failed execution this year, after officials spent over an hour unsuccessfully trying to insert an intravenous line into Tony Carruthers in May.
The political fallout has been swift. Governor Bill Lee has cancelled the state’s remaining scheduled execution this year, ordered an independent review and accepted the resignation of the state’s prisons chief. Pike’s lawyers are now pressing him to commute her sentence to life imprisonment, while Senator Marsha Blackburn, the Republican candidate to succeed him, has urged the state to consider alternative methods so that capital punishment can continue. Legal experts are divided over whether Tennessee could lawfully try again. Some argue that a second attempt would amount to cruel and unusual punishment, while others believe the current Supreme Court would conclude that her sentence was death, not a single attempt at it.
The case tests the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment and applies to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court has repeatedly upheld lethal injection, ruling that the Constitution does not guarantee a painless death. In Louisiana ex rel. Francis v Resweber (1947), it even permitted a second electrocution after the first had failed. Pike’s case differs, however, because the lethal drug was administered, apparently making her the first person to survive such an attempt.
The story also illustrates the nature of American federalism. Criminal justice is overwhelmingly a state responsibility, so whether a person can be executed, and by what method, depends heavily on where they live. Roughly half the states retain the death penalty, while others have abolished it entirely, and some are now turning to nitrogen gas or firing squads. Supporters of federalism see this diversity as democratic responsiveness to local opinion. Critics argue that fundamental rights should not depend on geography, and that a Supreme Court reluctant to intervene leaves civil liberties dependent on the competence of individual states.