'This Situation Is Tragic': Marsha Blackburn Says Christa Pike Should Have Been 'Executed' a While Ago as She Calls to Bring Back Electric Chair

U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn is calling for Tennessee to reinstate the electric chair as a means of execution after a lethal injection attempt on Wednesday, September 30, failed to execute Christa Pike.

“While there should be a thorough review of what happened and why the process failed, the answer is simple: bring back the electric chair and deliver justice for these victims swiftly,” Blackburn, who is running for governor, expressed in a public statement.

Blackburn began her statement by saying the situation was “tragic” and that Pike “should have been executed long ago.”

Blackburn also noted that “this botched process is extending the pain for the family of Colleen Slemmer,” a 19-year-old Knoxville Job Corps student who was murdered by Pike in 1995.

The Republican closed her statement with a campaign promise. “As your governor, I will do just that,” Blackburn said, referring to her call to bring back the electric chair.

Pike, 50, was supposed to be put to death by lethal injection the morning of September 30, but before she could be executed, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay while it reviewed whether her claims that she had been sexually abused as a child had been properly considered when she was sentenced.

After the state took the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court, the court allowed the execution to proceed later that evening, and prison officials at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tenn., administered two doses of the lethal injection drug to Pike, but she survived.

According to a media witness present at the execution, Pike could be heard “loudly snoring, clearly very alive” in the chamber until witnesses were instructed to leave around 8:53 p.m., and the Tennessee Department of Correction said she was taken to an off-site medical facility.

Pike stated that she felt as though her arm was going to explode during the process. Her lawyers, Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason, said in a statement afterward, “Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution.”

Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, called the botched execution “a mess."

Gov. Bill Lee stated in a release on Thursday, October 1, that he has asked for “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred,” and that there will be no additional executions in the state for the remainder of the year.

The Tennessee Department of Correction released a statement saying it “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.”

“So far as we know, the Department of Correction followed exactly the protocol as outlined,” Lee told reporters.

This is the second time this year that Tennessee did not successfully execute an inmate. In May, officials called off Tony Carruthers’ lethal injection when they were unable to insert an IV for over an hour.

In a recent TargetSmart poll, Blackburn leads Democratic candidate Jerri Green, and Blackburn has spoken publicly about bringing back the electric chair during her campaign.

She stated in an interview in July that she believes in “flipping the switch,” while Green has called executions “inhumane, expensive, and biased.”

The electric chair is currently available in certain circumstances within Tennessee, and the Department of Correction has said five inmates selected this method of execution from 2018 to 2019.

Pike was convicted of murder in 1996 for the 1995 killing of Slemmer, who she lured to a remote area of the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus with two others.