Doctor Who Oversaw Christa Pike's Botched Execution Says She Still Deserves to Die

A cluster of headlines now sits side by side on the same news feed, and together they sketch two very different accounts of the same failed execution. One belongs to Christa Pike, the condemned inmate who survived the attempt to put her to death. The other belongs to the doctor who oversaw it.

The physician's account, as headlined by the New York Post, People.com and others, is that Pike still deserves to die. The Post's headline adds that he compared himself to Jesus. The material available here does not spell out the context of that comparison, so what he meant by it, and in what setting he said it, is not something this account can establish. What the headlines do make plain is his position: the failure of the procedure has not changed his view of what her sentence should be.

Pike's account is of a different kind. Headlines from CNN and The New York Times report that she has made her first public comments since the botched execution. The Times headline carries her words as 'My Body Hurts,' and says she described pain and isolation afterward. The CNN headline quotes another line: 'Healing is not the same as being okay.' Taken together, they indicate that she is living with physical pain and with being cut off from other people.

Where she is living matters to the story. According to WZTV's headline, Pike is seeking an end to her isolation in the prison infirmary. That places her in a medical unit of the prison after the failed attempt, separated from others, and asking to be moved out of that situation. The headlines do not say how long she has been there, who controls the decision, or whether any formal request has been filed or answered.

The contrast is stark. A physician who took part in the process argues for finishing it. The person on whom it failed describes a body that hurts and a confinement she wants to see end. Neither statement settles the larger questions the episode raises, but both are now on the public record in some form.

The available material is thin on specifics. It does not give the date of the attempted execution, the cause of the failure, the physician's name, or the venue of Pike's remarks. Those details would be needed to judge how much weight the competing claims can bear.

What to watch next is her request. Whether she is released from isolation in the infirmary, and what the state says about her care after a failed attempt, will show how the system handles a condemned prisoner it could not execute.