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The woman on death row who survived two lethal injections during a botched execution in the state of Tennessee, in the United States, is in critical condition and is receiving "life-saving medical care," her lawyer reported on Thursday.
Christa Pike, 50, was taken to a hospital after the failed attempt to carry out the death penalty on Wednesday. It was not clear how she resisted the doses of pentobarbital, a potent barbiturate used for veterinary euthanasia and assisted suicide in countries where this practice is legal.
"What we have been told is that she is in critical condition and is receiving life-saving medical care," said Randy Spivey in a virtual press conference.
The lawyer called on Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, who rejected a clemency request earlier in the week, to commute Pike's death sentence.
"After having endured more than 20 years in solitary confinement and an attempted execution by lethal injection, Christa has suffered a greater punishment than any other person in the history of the death penalty in the United States," he said.
"The governor must commute Christa's sentence right now," Spivey emphasized.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, also urged the state of Tennessee to desist from executing Pike.
This case highlights "multiple reasons why the death penalty should be abolished," his office noted on X. "The prolonged suffering -physical and mental- derived from multiple failed execution attempts is abominable and cruel. And key questions about the fairness of the trial remain unresolved," he said.
Robin Maher, director of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), a benchmark in the United States, described the botched execution as "unprecedented."
Pike would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
Witnesses to the procedure performed at the Riverbend maximum security prison in Nashville said that Pike continued to breathe and snore audibly after receiving the two injections of pentobarbital.
[Publicidad]