Christa Pike’s lawyer is calling for her death-row sentence to be commuted, saying that her “tortuous” failed execution is punishment enough even for her “awful crime.”
Stephen Ferrell called on Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to spare Pike from future execution attempts even if she recovers from being critically ill after surviving Wednesday’s botched double injection for the 1995 murder of her classmate Colleen Slemmer.
“This has been a serious punishment for a very serious and awful crime,” Ferrell, an assistant federal defender, told CNN on Sunday.
“I don’t think that attempting another execution is going to bring justice.”
The outgoing governor suspended all state executions for the rest of the year but has not ruled out Pike later being put to death.
However, it is still too soon to know if she will even recover from the botched attempt, her lawyer stressed.
“She’s still in the hospital on a ventilator, critically ill,” Ferrell told CNN.
“We don’t really know the prognosis yet, and may not for several days. We don’t know what her physical state will be, but it is clear that she has endured a tortuous attempt at executing her.
“I think one of the main things that will leave this up in the air for a while is the fact that we don’t know what the prognosis is — as in, the long-term prognosis. If she recovers — she may not fully recover.
“There may be issues about her competence. We just don’t know any of this.”
Pike’s lawyers say problems with the intravenous lines resulted in the doses of pentobarbital to flow into her body instead of her bloodstream.
They blasted Tennessee officials for not remedying the problem, according to court documents.
“Apparently at no point did any member of the execution team realize that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had blown and that the pentobarbital was, in whole or in part, entering Ms. Pike’s body,” they said in a court document.
Pike was strapped to a gurney inside the execution chamber at Nashville’s Riverbend Maximum Security Institution when she was given the two doses.
She felt a “burning” sensation after the second dose was administered and asked if the feeling was normal, according to journalists who were witnesses to the attempted execution.
Pike was sentenced to death for the killing of her classmate Slemmer, whom she lured into an isolated area near the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville with her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp.
Slemmer was assaulted and tortured with a box cutter, and had a pentagram carved into her chest while she was still alive.
Pike, who was 18 at the time of the crime, was sentenced to death for the murder. Shipp, who was 17 when the killing took place, got a sentence of life plus 25 years with the possibility of parole.
Pike was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder – and said she was a “mentally ill 18-year-old kid” at the time of the murder.
Shipp was denied parole in October 2025 “due to the seriousness of the offense,” and his case is not eligible for review until October 2031, WCNC reported.
Gov. Lee said he was “highly disappointed” by the botched execution and called for a “thorough, and comprehensive and third-party review and investigation” of the state’s protocol.
Frank Strada, the Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner, will step down later this month.
With Post wires.
