Christa Pike’s botched execution has sparked calls to reform the state’s execution protocols.
Tennessee Democrats say that Gov. Bill Lee’s pause on executions and call for an independent review should’ve been issued earlier this year when the state failed to execute Tony Carruthers. Lee told reporters Thursday morning that a point of failure has not yet been identified and everything happened according to protocol.
“If that is true, then the protocol itself is a problem,” Sen. Raumesh Akbari, D-Memphis, said in a statement. “It is time for the General Assembly to exercise its oversight function over the executive branch. We will gladly work with the majority party in the interest of transparency and accountability. This should never happen again.”
The protocols arrived as the state restarted executions last year after a three-year review into the drugs used in the state’s lethal injections.
Tennessee Sen. Heidi Campbell, D-Nashville, said that what happened to Pike on Wednesday was a “moral catastrophe” that cost the state roughly $500,000.
“I have always opposed the death penalty. It is irreversible and applied unequally, and it has never made Tennesseans safer. But you don’t have to share my view to be appalled. If the state claims the power to kill, it has a basic duty to be competent, transparent, and humane,” Campbell posted on Facebook.
U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, the GOP nominee and frontrunner to replace the outgoing Gov. Lee, has called to use the electric chair as the standard for executions. Her Democratic opponent, Jerri Green, said that, if elected, she would extend Lee’s moratorium and have death row inmates live out a life sentence without parole.
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