President Donald Trump has given his first comments on the botched execution of Christa Pike, after Tennessee failed to put the 50-year-old to death on Wednesday despite administering two doses of lethal injection drugs.
What Trump said
Speaking to reporters after landing in Texas on Air Force One, Trump was asked whether he would push for any changes to capital punishment following the failed execution. He replied: "Well, that was an interesting situation, but you're going to have to speak to Tennessee about it, whether or not they're going to go forward." He then turned to Republican Representative Ronny Jackson, his former White House physician, who was standing beside him, and asked: "You know what that was about? An execution where the medication didn't exactly work. He would answer it better than anybody. How does that happen?" Jackson answered: "I don't know how that happens. It should be easy to do." Trump agreed, saying: "It shouldn't be very difficult."
Pike's condition
Pike was taken to hospital on Wednesday night and remains in critical condition. Her lawyer Randy Spivey said at a news conference: "We don't have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment. But we know she is alive right now." Her legal team had warned before the execution that a lifelong blood disorder made it difficult to access her veins. Fellow attorney Steve Ferrell said: "Throughout her life, she's explained to us that she had trouble having blood drawn."
The state's response
Governor Bill Lee called what happened "deeply disturbing" and ordered a third-party review, while indefinitely postponing Pike's execution and the one other execution scheduled for this year. He told reporters: "This is a tragedy. There is no one that wanted what happened last night to happen. It shouldn't have happened." The Tennessee Department of Correction maintains it followed every step of its established protocol. According to reports, as many as seven needles were used during the attempt.
Background on the case
Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a classmate at a Knoxville job training facility. She was convicted alongside her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, who was 17 at the time and received life with the possibility of parole. A third friend, Shadolla Peterson, pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact, testified against the couple and received six years' probation. An appeals court had stopped Pike's execution an hour before it was due to start on Wednesday, before the US Supreme Court overturned that stay hours later.
