US death penalty halt calls grow after ‘torturous’ botched execution of Christa Pike

Calls for a moratorium on the US death penalty are intensifying after Tennessee halted the execution of Christa Pike, leaving her alive but in critical condition and requiring life-saving medical care. Pike’s failed execution on Wednesday has renewed scrutiny of lethal injection procedures and prompted lawyers, doctors, religious figures and death penalty experts to call for a suspension of executions across the United States. Tennessee governor Bill Lee called off the procedure after Pike had been administered two full syringes of pentobarbital. She is reportedly the only person to have survived receiving 5mg of the sedative, a dose generally considered fatal under normal circumstances.

About an hour after the first injection, witnesses reportedly heard Pike breathing, choking and struggling. She was also found to have a heartbeat. Her lawyers said her condition remained uncertain, including the extent of any possible brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation. Sandra Babcock, a death penalty scholar at Cornell law school who advises Pike’s legal team, described the incident in stark terms. Babcock said that, at a minimum, Tennessee governor Bill Lee should commute Christa Pike’s death sentence to life imprisonment.

Pike’s other lawyer, Randy Spivey, who witnessed the execution attempt inside the death chamber, described the ordeal as “cruel and torturous”. He said he personally counted seven needles inserted into Pike’s left arm, with one apparently bent when it was removed. Pike, 50, was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of her teenage classmate, Colleen Slemmer. Her execution would have made her the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries. Lawyers and advocates demand a halt

Wednesday’s incident was the second failed execution in Tennessee in five months. In May, Tony Carruthers survived an execution attempt after officials were unable to establish an intravenous line. He has since been assigned another execution date for next May. The problems have not been limited to Tennessee. Alabama previously failed to execute death row prisoners Alan Miller and Kenneth Smith after officials could not establish intravenous access.

Both men were later executed using nitrogen gas, an alternative method that has generated significant legal and ethical controversy. A federal judge subsequently blocked Alabama’s use of nitrogen in executions in June, ruling that the method constituted cruel and unusual punishment. Some states have also turned to firing squads. Those executions have faced their own controversies, including concerns about bullets failing to strike the heart and questions over whether some shots may have been intentionally misdirected.

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Religious leaders condemn execution attempt

Helen Prejean, a Catholic nun and prominent US death penalty abolition advocate, described the failed execution as an extreme example of cruelty. “This is the essence of cruelty. Take a conscious, imaginative human being, give her a date for her death, have her anticipate it over and over again, and then take her out and try and kill her. She was rendered defenceless as they deliberately attempted to kill her, what greater mental torture for a human being is there?”

Prejean said she hoped Pike’s experience “would be redemptive for others, and help to wake up the nation”.

The latest incident has also renewed questions about whether lethal injection can legitimately be described as a medicalised or humane procedure. Joel Zivot, a professor of anesthesiology in Atlanta who has reviewed hundreds of autopsies of people executed in the US, said lethal injection should not be considered a medical procedure.

“This is the impersonation of a medical act. It is the theft of a medical act. So when it goes awry, that is not at all surprising to me.”

Renewed debate over a US execution moratorium

The last nationwide pause on executions in the US came in 1972, when the Supreme Court ruled in Furman v Georgia that the death penalty was being applied in a capricious and arbitrary manner. The suspension ended four years later.

Calls for another nationwide moratorium are now emerging alongside increased pressure to carry out executions.

Donald Trump has repeatedly urged states with the death penalty and the federal Department of Justice to accelerate executions. Last year, the US recorded 47 executions across 12 states, the highest annual total in 16 years. Prejean pointed to changing public attitudes toward capital punishment. Gallup polling has tracked a decline in support for the death penalty over the decades.

In 1993, when her book Dead Man Walking was published, 80% of Americans supported the death penalty for people convicted of murder. That figure now stands at 52%, according to the polling cited in the discussion. “That’s progress, though not enough. People have good hearts, but they are too removed from the process that is secret and hidden. We have got to bring this to the people, bring them into the execution chamber, so that they too become a witness.”