After Tennessee officials failed in their 30 September attempt to execute death row inmate Christa Gail Pike for a 1995 murder, the state’s Gov. Bill Lee halted the one remaining execution for the rest of the year pending an investigation.
But some Catholic opponents of the death penalty said that the incident demonstrates the flaws with capital punishment.
Officials administered two doses of a lethal drug to Pike, but her attorneys told media outlets that she remained “alive and loudly snoring” after the attempted lethal injection and was later taken by ambulance from the prison to a hospital.
“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective,” Lee said in a statement to The Associated Press.
But Richard Garnett, director of the Notre Dame Program on Church, State and Society, said in written comments, “The failed attempt to execute Christa Pike illustrates, yet again, the delusion that by making executions look more ‘medical,’ ‘technical’, or ‘scientific’ we are somehow changing what they are, namely, killings of helpless human beings – who have, to be sure, committed horrible crimes – by our governments, in our names.”
