Doctor who saved Christa Pike's life after botched execution reveals why he still wants her dead
The doctor who oversaw Christa Pike‘s failed execution revealed his wish to still see her put to death, despite the inmate describing her 'constant pain' since waking up.
Dr Mark Fowler was the healthcare professional assigned to pronounce Pike dead during the 30 September execution failure in Tennessee.
In an interview with Intelligencer, Fowler, said he was in a waiting room while the execution was taking place and was called into the chamber to pronounce her dead.
However, when he entered, that wasn't the case.
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“She’s not dead,” Fowler claims the warden told him, and while that didn't trouble him at first, there was more to come.
“I thought, ‘Well, in human beings there’s a spectrum of responses to medications and we’ll give it a few more minutes,’” he told the outlet of what he was thinking.
But as time went on and Pike didn't die, he was worried that she'd be left with irreversible brain damage, and ultimately diagnosed her as being comatose.
From here, he claims the deputy commissioner ordered the execution halted, and Fowler immediately issued medical help to save Pike's life.
However, despite the life-saving measures and worry for her long-term recovery, Fowler says he still thinks Pike should be put to death.
Fowler told Intelligencer that the state should bring back the three-drug cocktail lethal-injection protocol that included the use of potassium chloride, instead of the one-dose pentobarbital.
Fowler also said when Pike 'complained of pain in her arm they should have stopped and reassessed, and they didn’t.'
But he considers her death to be 'a sense of justice' for her victims' mother.
“People will say, ‘Why don’t you just walk away from this?’ And the answer is, that’s exactly what the advocates against the death penalty want,” he said, claiming to have been met with backlash for his stance. “They felt that if they could humiliate me I would step back from it — because I promise you, there ain’t anybody else in Tennessee going to sign up for it now — and the answer is, I cannot be pushed off a course that I find correct. I refuse to compromise.”
He added: “I’m not an evil, vicious person. I’m not unscrupulous. I’m not uncaring, and I’m not incompetent.”
At the time, Pike was due to be executed after spending more than three decades on Death Row after she was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old fellow Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer.
Whilst lying on the table, she was injected with two doses of pentobarbital, but shockingly, survived both attempts and was rushed to hospital.
Pike was unconscious and hooked up to a ventilator for five days, and was not expected to survive.
However, she made a shocking recovery and was moved to Debra K Johnson Rehabilitation Centre.
In her first statement since the failed execution, Pike said she was in constant pain and is upset over the way things occurred in the chamber.
“There hasn’t been a moment since that night when I haven’t been in pain. My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to speak.”
She said she had 'not contemplated life beyond that night' and is 'deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position'.
When it comes to how other officials feel about her death sentence in light of the failed attempt on her life, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee recently spoke out on whether the state will try to execute Pike again.
Lee told WSMV: "As it relates to a particular individual like Christa Pike and her crime, she’s still incarcerated under the laws of the State of Tennessee.
"I suspect her sentence will be the same as before unless determined otherwise by the courts."
Britt Jones