Blackburn calls on TN to ‘bring back’ electric chair after botched Christa Pike execution

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) on Thursday called on Tennessee to reintroduce the electric chair for executions after death-row prisoner Christa Pike survived two lethal injections the day before.

Blachburn, who is the GOP nominee in the Volunteer State’s gubernatorial race, called the botched execution “tragic” and said it prolonged the grief process for victims in this case.

“While there should be a thorough review of what happened and why the process failed, the answer is simple: bring back the electric chair and deliver justice for these victims swiftly,” the senator wrote on social media . “As your governor, I will do just that.”

Pike was convicted of first-degree murder after she confessed to the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville, Tenn.

Prosecutors said Slemmer was lured to an abandoned steam plant near the University of Tennessee Agricultural campus and beaten, tortured and killed by Pike and the inmate’s then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp. Shipp was not eligible for the death penalty since he was 17 at the time of the crime, and he was sentenced to life in prison and denied parole last year.

Following the state’s botched lethal injection process on Wednesday evening, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) ordered Pike’s execution to be delayed until at least next year to allow for an independent investigation to take place.

Earlier this year, state executioners failed to execute death row inmate Tony Carruthers after they failed to find a vein for a lethal injection. Lee granted a one-year reprieve in this case.

Memphis City Council member Jerri Green, the Democratic nominee in the governor’s race, pushed back on Blackburn’s call to bring back the electric chair in a statement.

“There is a lack of transparency around drug testing, as well as qualified and ethical personnel—but the fact of the matter is: the death penalty has always been inhumane, expensive, and biased,” she wrote on social media . “And Marsha Blackburn wants to bring back one of the most cruel forms of capital punishment, the electric chair.”

Green noted she would “put a moratorium on all future executions” if elected to the state’s top office.

“If we say we are pro-life, that means we must be anti-death penalty,” the Democrat added.

Pike is the sole woman on Tennessee’s death row, and she would have been the first woman to be executed in the state in over 200 years.

Her scheduled execution was initially delayed by an 11th-hour stay order from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which was later lifted by the Supreme Court. The high court’s three liberal justices dissented in this decision.

Advocacy groups called on the state to abolish the death penalty following the Wednesday botched execution attempt.

United Nations Human Rights Chief Volker Türk called on state authorities “not to pursue any further attempt to execute Pike” in a Thursday statement .

“The prolonged suffering — physical and mental — arising from multiple failed execution attempts is abhorrent, and cruel,” Türk said. “And there are key fair trial questions still unresolved.”