Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has hinted that Christa Pike’s sentence will stay the same after her botched execution last month.
Convicted murderer, Pike, 50, was set to be the first woman put to death in the Volunteer State in over 200 years on Sept. 30, but instead became the first prisoner in US history to survive after being given the lethal injection.
“As it related to a particular individual like Christa Pike and her crime, she’s still incarcerated under the laws of the state of Tennessee,” Lee said.
“I suspect her sentence will be the same as before unless determined otherwise by the courts.”
Pike’s lawyers had begged Lee –– who will leave office in January –– to commute her sentence, saying she has “endured punishment greater than any other person in the history of the American death penalty.”
Lee paused all executions in the state for the rest of the year following the fiasco and ordered an independent review into what went wrong.
Pike was given the death sentence for murdering her Job Corps classmate Colleen Slemmer in a jealous rage in Knoxville in 1995.
After her failed execution, Slemmer’s mom, May Martinez, said she thinks “the state owes me a big apology.”
“She killed my daughter and I don’t want to see another child or another person hurt like she did,” Martinez told First Coast News.
Pike was rushed to hospital after she survived two doses of pentobarbital allegedly administered with at least 10 needles during her bungled execution at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
She remained unconscious in the days after the botched execution and was believed to be brain dead before shockingly waking up on Oct. 6.
Pike is currently being held at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center (DJRC), formerly known as the Tennessee Prison for Women, and her lawyers said last week she is now speaking in full sentences.
Earlier this month, a judge reopened Pike’s civil case against the use of lethal injection to execute her.
The judge also ordered the Tennessee Department of Correction to preserve all evidence related to the botched execution after Pike’s lawyers argued it could be “relevant for any future challenge she makes.”
