Listen....... i am reading about this bitch ......christa pike ....who........ has survived ........ two death sentences .....listen fucko's........ a bullet right in the temple ......bang !!!!!!!......a buck!!!!! ......gone !!!!!!!! ...simple..... simple .......... dolly fucking dimple........cattle get fucked everyday........ look at the size of then bastards ......... a bolt.....through the dome/crust/temple/head'/brain ...... whatever you call it ....... in your neck of the woods ....this bitch is one tough ....how you say .....fucking bitch ......just fucking shoot her it does not fail right in the head ....what's the fucking problem i say .....oh well i guess i think too normal for the rest .........
'Uncharted territory': Will Tennessee try to kill Christa Pike again?
With the astonishing news that Christa Pike is conscious, talking and making a "medically unprecedented" recovery following her botched execution, Tennessee is now facing a critical question: Will the state try to kill her again?
"Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaking, and continues to receive critical medical care," her attorneys said in a statement on Oct. 6. "Her prognosis remains unclear but, at a minimum, we expect a long recovery."
So far, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has not responded to repeated calls from Pike's attorneys and death penalty observers to commute her sentence to life in prison. That leaves open the possibility that Pike will face a second execution, even after her attorneys said the first attempt on Sept. 30 amounted to unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.
"We're in uncharted territory," said Robin Maher, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which does not take a stance on the death penalty.
"The U.S. Supreme Court has not decided whether a second execution attempt would violate the constitution since 1947," Maher told USA TODAY. "These are questions that have never needed to be asked before and no one knows the answers."
As Pike continues to recover in a Tennessee hospital, USA TODAY is looking at the issues that state officials will need to weigh when deciding whether Pike will live or die.
When did the Supreme Court last address a second execution?
The last time the Supreme Court addressed whether an inmate who survived an execution would face another one was nearly 80 years ago in 1947.
The case involved Willie Francis, a 17-year-old Black teen convicted of murder by an all-white jury for a crime committed when he was 16. His first execution inside the local parish jail in St. Martinville, Louisiana, was halted when the portable electric chair known as "Gruesome Gertie" failed to deliver enough current. It was widely reported that the electrical mechanism malfunctioned due to improper setup by a drunken prison guard.
Witnesses said Francis screamed "Take it off! Take it off! Let me breathe!" from behind his leather hood. The execution was aborted, and an appeal was filed to the Supreme Court. Francis spent the next year back on death row awaiting a decision from the Supreme Court about whether a second electrocution would be unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The court justices ruled that the state could put Francis back in the electric chair, writing that "accidents happen for which no man is to blame."
"Even the fact that (Francis) has already been subjected to a current of electricity does not make his subsequent execution any more cruel in the constitutional sense than any other execution," the Supreme Court concluded. "The cruelty against which the Constitution protects a convicted man is cruelty inherent in the method of punishment, not the necessary suffering involved in any method employed to extinguish life humanely."
Francis was successfully executed in the electric chair on May 9, 1947. He told reporter Elliott Chaze a few days before the execution that he was going to meet the Lord with his "Sunday pants and Sunday heart."
Experts: Pike's case differs from 1947 case
There's a huge difference between what happened to Francis in 1947 and what happened to Pike last week, said Columbia Law School's Bernard Harcourt, who is writing a book about a botched lethal injection in Alabama involving an inmate he represented.
