After a second botched execution in Tennessee this year, the Catholic Mobilizing Network is renewing its call to end the death penalty.
Christa Pike, sentenced to death in Tennessee, survived two lethal doses of pentobarbital on September 30, and is now alive and receiving medical care. Pike had been incarcerated on death row since 1996, after Pike, then 18, and two friends lured her 19-year-old Job Corps classmate Colleen Slemmer into the woods, then tortured and killed her.
No prisoner in the modern era of the death penalty has survived the administration of lethal injection drugs, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. A witness described Pike complaining of pain during the repeated failed execution procedures — saying her arm felt “about to burst open.”
Pike’s case is the second botched execution in Tennessee this year. Death row inmate Tony Von Carruthers suffered a botched execution in May, leading Governor Bill Lee to grant a one-year reprieve. After this second botched execution, Lee suspended executions for the rest of the year, pending an investigation.
“A wake up call”
“We are stunned and bewildered by this unprecedented news,” said Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network, in a statement. “We pray for Ms. Pike’s current condition, and we pray for the victim Colleen Slemmer’s family as this situation must surely be retraumatizing.”
Catholic Mobilizing Network is a national organization that mobilizes "Catholics and all people of goodwill to value life over death” and “to end the use of the death penalty,” among other aims.
Vaillancourt Murphy hopes that the “horrifying” event will be a needed “wake up call,” saying:
There is nothing normal about taking a life, and last night’s horrifying events reminds us of that. For Tennessee to have two botched executions in a matter of months is beyond alarming. It is the epitome of “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment.
We pray this is the needed wake up call for Gov. Lee—in fact, for everyone—to recognize the barbarism of capital punishment. The Church teaches that the death penalty is “inadmissible” because every human life is sacred, no matter the harm one has caused or suffered, and because we have more effective ways to protect society than to take another life.
The Catholic position
Murphy quoted the Catechism of the Catholic Church #2267, which states:
The Church teaches, in light of the Gospel, that the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person, and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.
Shortly before the attempted execution of Carruthers, Tennessee’s Catholic bishops wrote a letter to Governor Lee asking for clemency and stating that the death penalty is not a “just punishment,” saying:
As we have pointed out in earlier letters, our own Church teaching has evolved on the topic of the death penalty. Once it saw execution as a legal means to protect society from those who have committed grave crimes. The last four popes, beginning with Pope St. John Paul II and continuing the first American born pope, Leo XIV, have clearly stated and formally incorporated into our teaching that the death penalty is no longer necessary to protect society and is not permissible as a just punishment.
Nearly three-quarters of nations around the world have abolished capital punishment either completely or in practice, but a minority of nations continue to hand down death sentences and carry out executions. Twenty-seven states in the U.S. still permit capital punishment.
The failed execution attempt came on the eve of October’s Respect Life Month, a time dedicated to “building a culture that cherishes and protects every human life.” Catholics will celebrate Respect Life Sunday on October 4.
