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My friend and colleague Brian Lilley once said, over a beer, that he was against the death penalty.
When I asked why, Lilley noted that the government screws up everything. Why should we believe they wouldn’t botch an execution?
EXHIBIT A: Christa Pike.
Wednesday had been pencilled in as the finale in the 50-year-old convicted killer’s heartbreaking odyssey through life.
Sentenced to death at 18
At 18, Pike had been sentenced to death for the stomach-churning torture murder of love rival Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville, Tenn.
But an hour before Pike was slated to board the express train to Nowheresville, she was given a temporary reprieve. The U.S. Supreme Court then torpedoed that particular break.
Now, her determined executioners were against the clock because the death warrant expired at midnight. The death machine would not be denied and the result was two botched attempts to extinguish Pike and now a moratorium on the death penalty in Tennessee.
Pegged as a Satanic killer because of a pentagram carved into her victim’s chest, along with her age, Pike got boffo ink out of the starting gate. But it’s never been enough to save her. Those horrors on a summer day in the south have been followed by 31 dreary years on death row.
Florida iced Curtis Beasley the night before
The day before Pike’s scheduled last waltz, 800 km east at the Florida state death house in Starke, the executioner got it right. Curtis Wilkie Beasley, 77, was made defunct courtesy of a toxic cocktail.
He was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m., the 16th execution this year in the league-leading Sunshine State. Beasley died for the bungled robbery murder in 1995 of Carolyn Monfort at her Orlando-area home.
And that was that. No witnesses. Few headlines. These were reserved for Christa Gail Pike. That is the narrative demanded in this Lindsay Clancy-infused year of 2026.
As the clock ticked down, Pike’s lawyers argued on Wednesday that not enough consideration had been given to their client’s horrific childhood. Like most who find themselves strapped to the gurney, she grew up poor with the side dishes of physical, emotional and sexual abuse.
Death row is filled with folks like Christa Pike
America’s death rows are packed to the rafters with people like Christa Pike and her tale resonated with pretty much everyone except the U.S. Supreme Court.
On Thursday, Pike’s lawyers reported that she was still breathing after being hammered with two doses of lethal pentobarbital. The doomed woman would not die.
And the death penalty has taken yet another black eye. The whole lethal injection has been sold to the public as being akin to a faithful dog getting his forever sleep. It is not.
On Thursday, Tennessee officials would only say that Pike is in a Nashville hospital. They did not reveal the convicted killer’s condition, but some reports suggest she has suffered brain damage because of the death house blunder.
Her lawyers said in a statement: “Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution. We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms. Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy.”
Years ago I interviewed Pike on death row. At the time I asked one of her guards whether he ever expected to see her executed.
“Nope,” the Buffalo, N.Y., native told me. “Tennessee hasn’t executed a woman since 1819. Tennessee doesn’t execute women.”
Late Wednesday, the state tried it on. And failed.
bhunter@postmedia.com
@HunterTOSun