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“If the death penalty goes wrong, which it has done in this case, it becomes the duty of the state to restore the prisoner to health.” Christa Pike may now be too unwell to be executed after surviving two lethal injections, experts have said. The 50-year-old, sentenced to die for torturing and killing 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995, said she was at peace as her scheduled lethal injection began on Wednesday. But, rather than leaving the prison in a hearse, Pike left in an ambulance having survived two doses of the pentobarbital meant to kill her, and is now undergoing "life-saving" care. Had the procedure succeeded, Pike would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Governor Bill Lee ordered a review of Pike’s failed execution and postponed another scheduled for later this year, calling what happened in the death chamber “deeply disturbing”. Pike is said to have complained about her arm hurting during the procedure and was heard snoring and thrashing about on the gurney before it was halted. Maya Foa, of human rights organisation Reprive, said Pike may have suffered brain damage during the procedure, and if she survives, she may no longer meet the mental competency threshold for execution. Pike, she suggested, could be granted a reprieve of varying length and her lawyers may now argue that undergoing a second lethal injection violates the US Constitution’s clause forbidding cruel and unusual punishment. She could also launch a pain and suffering civil lawsuit. Meanwhile, Dr Joel Zivot, an Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and Surgery at Emory University School of Medicine, told The Sun that the pentobarbital likely did not enter Pike’s bloodstream, and instead, soaked into arm tissue. The doctor suggested she may now have significant burns on one, ot both arms, and require skin grafts, and that Pike may have a weakened heart. Dr Zivot said Pike may now be too sick to be executed, telling the publisher: "So if Christa Pike’s health should be such a thing that it can never be restored to some degree… then she may not face [execution] again.” “If the death penalty goes wrong, which it has done in this case, it becomes the duty of the state to restore the prisoner to health. So, they’re bound to do it,” the doctor added. #christapike

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