No Execution Order Pending for Christa Pike, State Tells Court — but No Promises, Either

There is no pending order to execute Christa Pike, a Tennessee assistant attorney general told a Nashville court on Wednesday, but the state stopped short of guaranteeing a new execution date won’t be issued.“There is no pending execution order for Miss Pike. There is no allegation that one is coming,” Assistant Attorney General John W. Ayers told Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles during a status conference.When pressed on whether the state intended to make that permanent, Mr. Ayers declined to commit.“So is the state’s position that the state is not going to revive an order?” Judge Myles asked. “I understand that all executions have been suspended for now. Is that going to be permanent, or is the state prepared to take the position that Miss Pike will not be rescheduled?”Mr. Ayers said he was not in a position to answer. When the judge pushed further, asking if he could rule out a new execution order being presented “tomorrow,” Mr. Ayers said the decision rests with the Tennessee Supreme Court.Questions of double jeopardy have swirled around the case. “What’s unprecedented here is that the drugs started to flow and she survived,” a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, Austin Sarat, told The New York Sun. “There have been botched lethal injections, mostly where the doctor can’t find the vein, but this is the first actual survivor.”Courts have held that with lethal injection, the punishment does not begin until the drugs start to flow, which is why a state can try again after a failed IV. With Ms. Pike, the drugs did flow, so the punishment had begun, and the ban on punishing someone twice for the same crime, known as double jeopardy, would seem to apply, Mr. Sarat said.“Courts have not said you can’t try again to execute her,” he said. “If the state is going to execute someone, whatever the technology, it has an obligation to do it right. And if it doesn’t do it right, you only get one bite at the apple.”Luke Ihnen, one of Pike’s attorneys, argued that future plans to execute his client are important. “The state has made no promises that Ms. Pike will not be subject to a future execution, and the evidence that we are seeking to preserve now is relevant for any future challenge that she makes,” he told the court.High on the list of concerns raised by Mr. Pike’s legal team is what they allege went wrong inside the execution chamber on September 30. In court filings, her attorneys wrote: “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.”Ms. Pike’s attorneys filed an emergency motion on October 2 asking Judge Myles to order the Tennessee Department of Correction to preserve all physical, written and electronic records connected to the failed execution — evidence they say could form the basis of a future lawsuit.Among the items Ms. Pike’s defense team is asking the court to order preserved:Surveillance footage, photographs, and recordings from Sept. 30Handwritten logs, witness accounts, and checklistsEmails, text messages, and encrypted messagesTraining manuals, internal guidelines, and directivesRecords of calls for emergency helpEquipment from the execution chamber, including waste, packing labels, inserts, needles, catheters, medical supplies, restraints, gurneys, syringes, drugs, and IV linesThe state told the court it has already logged evidence — including log books, observation logs, medical waste and products, and electrocardiogram readouts — into a preservation room. But Mr. Ayers cautioned that some items sought by Ms. Pike’s team may no longer be in the department’s possession, noting that IV lines “were cut” and that portions “could have been still attached to Miss Pike when she was transported to the hospital.” He added that the department has photographed the chamber as it appeared that night.Mr. Ihnen also told the court that corrections officials have “put up roadblocks” limiting his access to Ms. Pike, including refusing to remove shackles confining her to her hospital bed despite requests from medical staff. Judge Myles ordered the medical team to submit a formal request on that matter and asked the state for more information on Ms. Pike’s ability to communicate before ruling on her access to a computer tablet.One of Ms. Pike’s lawyers, Randy Spivey, said, “She is angry and confused about everything right now. … She is very aware of what they did to her up to a point.”Among those closely following the case is Donald Kohut Jr., 48, of Flemington, New Jersey, who was convicted in 2012 for his role in a failed scheme to break Pike out of the Tennessee Prison for Women. Mr. Kohut, who began corresponding with Ms. Pike in 2011 and made regular trips to visit her in prison, told NJ.com the botched execution was exactly what he feared. “I’m the only family she has left,” he said.Meanwhile, Governor Bill Lee has called the whole matter “deeply disturbing” and ordered a “comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred.” The Republican also postponed the state’s only other execution in the state scheduled for this year.In addition, the state’s prison chief resigned in the wake of the failed execution.

No Execution Order Pending for Christa Pike, State Tells Court — but No Promises, Either

No Execution Order Pending for Christa Pike, State Tells Court — but No Promises, Either

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