33 percent say second attempt should follow failed execution: Survey

A third of Americans think that the government should try a second time to put 50-year-old Christa Pike to death after she survived Tennessee’s attempt to execute her by lethal injection last month.

A four-day Reuters/Ipsos poll found 33 percent American adults said a second attempt should be made to execute inmates who survive the first time, while 39 percent supported life in prison instead.

On Sept. 30, Pike received two doses of the state’s lethal injection drug pentobarbital and survived. She was taken to a Nashville area hospital in an ambulance, where she received medical care and regained consciousness five days after. She was later discharged from the hospital and is back at the Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, the women’s prison where she was housed for 30 years.

Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 beating and stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer.

The latest poll showed 52 percent Republicans, compared to 24 percent Democrats, support a second execution attempt. About 55 percent of the Americans who responded to the poll supported the death penalty for people convicted ​of the most serious crimes, down from 63 percent from a 2017 poll, according to Reuters.

About 31 percent respondents opposed the death penalty, while 13 percent either skipped the question or said were not sure. A majority of Republicans, 80 percent, supported the death penalty in the latest poll, as opposed to 39 percent Democrats.

The nationwide poll was conducted online, gathering responses from 1,679 U.S. adults between Oct. 16-19. It had a margin of error of ​2 percentage points.