It is hard to watch a person die in the prison death chamber. I represented a man who chose the electric chair instead of lethal injection; it was the first such execution in Tennessee in 47 years. I walked the last mile with him.
I am also responsible for drafting Tennessee’s current death penalty statute in 1977. My views on the death penalty have never changed. But the recent series of botched executions should compel a reexamination of the way we put people to death.
We remember the execution of Marie Antoinette, but few recall the name of her husband – the king of France – who was also guillotined earlier the same year. It was not just Marie’s method of death but also her gender
which made her infamous. Whatever her ultimate fate, Christa Pike’s gender and her botched execution will continue to capture the public’s attention and erode its appetite for lethal injection, which has turned into a similarly gruesome spectacle.
Why is the world watching?
Late on Sept. 30, Tennessee officials strapped Pike to a gurney at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville and gave her two syringes of pentobarbital. She did not die. Witnesses heard her say “my arm feels like it’s about to burst open” before she went unconscious and began snoring loudly. Days later, she remains unconscious but on a ventilator in the hospital with burns and blisters on her arms. The U.N. human rights chief and Amnesty International have both condemned the debacle, and there has been extensive international news coverage.
Is the world watching because Pike is a woman? Certainly, at first. But the scope of the reaction is due more to the failures of the Tennessee Department of Correction than Pike herself. The department claims it followed all its protocols, but it would appear the protocols themselves are flawed as evidenced by the resignation of the department’s commissioner.
Why gender matters
Pike’s gender made this case newsworthy well before the execution failed. She had long been the only woman on Tennessee's death row. Had the execution worked, she would have been the first woman the state put to death since 1819. Only 18 women have been executed in the United States since 1976, about 1% of all executions.
Gender also runs through her legal defense. Her lawyers say she was sexually abused as a toddler and raped at ages 11 and 17. The Death Penalty Information Center said the "trauma and gender-based violence she suffered in childhood are similar to the experiences of all women sentenced to death." That story fits easily into wider international debates about women, violence and punishment. Foreign editors were already following the case even before things went wrong.
A pattern of failure
In May, the state stopped Tony Carruthers' execution after staff spent more than an hour failing to set an IV line. His lawyer said they punctured his chest, arms, feet and neck. That was also a botched execution, by the same state, in the same year. Although Carruthers also experienced significant trauma at the hands of inexplicable medical negligence, that attempt did not produce nearly the same reaction we have seen in recent days.
It has been stated Pike’s survival is unparalleled given she is the only person who has survived after being given lethal doses of an execution drug. A failed IV attempt is a story about incompetence. A prisoner who survives the drug itself raises much bigger questions, such as whether lethal injection satisfies its intended goal of offering a humane death.
The international response has focused on that debate. Nine U.N. experts called the attempts a "flagrant breach of the prohibition of torture." Abroad, where most democracies abolished the death penalty long ago, this case reads mainly as a story about American punitive cruelty. Reporters who were there talk about the curtains being drawn frequently with no explanations being provided as to what was happening. Indeed, at the press conference that evening, the witnesses were unsure as to whether Pike was still alive.
Why this case has remained in the public eye
Other factors add to the attention. Pike was 18 at the time of her 1995 murder of another girl. She committed the act with her boyfriend who was then 17, making him ineligible for the death penalty despite their proximity in age. The crime was so brutal that it has fascinated the public for three decades. Pike is the youngest woman sentenced to death in the modern era.
Gender explains why people were watching before Sept. 30. It does not explain why they have continued to follow. A woman executed for the first time in 100 years would have made headlines for a day. A prisoner of any gender who survived two lethal doses of pentobarbital and then lay in a hospital bed would draw global condemnation.
An unprecedented failure
Perhaps the most striking thing about this botched execution is the contradiction created that night: The state went to great lengths to cause Pike’s death before suddenly dispatching her to a hospital to restore her to health. Doctors are now working to keep her alive only for her to – perhaps – be sent back to the death chamber once she wakes up. While some have suggested she is protected from another attempt on the basis that her sentence has already been “carried out,” the Supreme Court has rejected that argument in other cases. I suggest the jurisprudence may be different here if Pike survives.
Any prisoner caught in this paradox between death and life, would make the death penalty look absurd. But the public image of a woman who caused and received so much pain now lying helpless in a hospital bed has made the moral tensions impossible to ignore.
We should continue to follow this case and debate the practical effectiveness of lethal injection. Regardless of how one feels about the death penalty or what should happen to Christa Pike, this debacle is an affront to the victim’s family and our entire criminal justice system.
David Raybin is a Nashville attorney. He is a former prosecutor at the trial and appellate level. Mr. Raybin is the author of “Tennessee Criminal Practice and Procedure.”
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: How much does gender matter in the Christa Pike case? | Opinion
