Tennessee: a botched execution, the sword of justice turned to torture

In Tennessee, the attempt to execute Christa Pike, fifty, the only woman on the state's death row, by lethal injection failed. She survived two doses of pentobarbital and was taken in critical condition to a hospital near the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville; journalists present said they could still hear her breathing after the curtains of the execution chamber were closed, before an ambulance left the prison. Governor Bill Lee ordered an independent inquiry into “exactly what happened” and suspended all other executions scheduled in the state this year. The department of correction did not officially confirm the failure, and no official information about her condition was released.

Her lawyers denounced difficulties in gaining access to the condemned woman's veins, possible anomalies linked to the pentobarbital, and the absence of adequate emergency medical assistance; several voices called on the governor to commute her sentence. Christa Pike had been sentenced in 1996 for the murder of Colleen Slemmer, nineteen, killed on a field of the University of Tennessee's agricultural campus; she was eighteen at the time of the crime. Shortly before the execution, a federal appeals court had ordered a stay to examine possible mitigating circumstances linked to sexual abuse suffered in childhood; at the state's request, the Supreme Court of the United States lifted that stay by six votes to three.

What the tradition teaches on the magistrate's sword

“Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus XX, 13). Expounding this precept, the Catechism of the Council of Trent at once distinguishes the killings that are forbidden from those that are not, and places among the latter “the homicides ordained by the magistrates who have the right of life and death to deal severely against the criminals whom the tribunals condemn, and to protect the innocent.” Far from being a crime, the just execution of the guilty is, says the Catechism, a faithful obedience to the Law: “When therefore they fulfil their functions with equity, not only are they not guilty of murder, but on the contrary they observe very faithfully the Law of God.”

Scripture grounds it: “Whosoever shall shed man's blood, his blood shall be shed: for man was made to the image of God” (Genesis IX, 6); and Saint Paul recalls that the prince “beareth not the sword in vain,” that he is “God's minister” to punish evil (Romans XIII, 4). On this point the doctrine is constant, and we will not pass it over in silence: the Church has never counted capital punishment, inflicted by legitimate authority, among the killings forbidden by the fifth commandment.

But the same doctrine lays down the condition of this lawfulness, and it is held entire in one word: equity. The sword is just only “with equity”; speaking of the soldier in a just war, the Catechism requires the same, “provided they obey not cupidity and cruelty, but seek only the public good.” Legitimate punishment has for its end to put the life of men in surety, not to add cruelty to death.

The measure

We do not therefore join our voice to those who condemn the death penalty in itself: the tradition does not do so, and we do not measure acts by the spirit of the age. What the tradition condemns is precisely what was lacking here: equity. An execution that fails, that leaves the condemned woman breathing after two doses of poison and is carried off alive toward an ambulance, is not the equitable sword of justice; it is its corruption into torture.

The modern machinery, vaunted as a clean and painless death, is the very site of the fault: it promises an aseptic justice and delivers agony, and it masks under a medical veneer the gravity of what the state accomplishes. Mario Marazziti, of the Community of Sant'Egidio, said it in his own way: “We have been sold the lie that one can kill without pain.” That the state, in the voice of its own governor ordering an inquiry, admits it does not know “exactly what happened” is enough to establish that the required equity was plainly not kept.

There remains the question of the sentence itself. That the condemned woman was eighteen at the time of the crime, that abuse suffered in childhood was judged worthy of examination by a federal court, that the highest court divided six votes to three, all of this touches equity still, for justice weighs the measure of the fault before it strikes. We do not pronounce on the sentence, which is not ours to hand down; we say only that the equity which the Catechism makes the condition of the lawful sword can accommodate neither the cruelty of torture nor lightness in judgment.

For the faithful

The state bears the sword lawfully, but under God and for justice, never for cruelty nor for spectacle; it will answer before God for the manner in which it strikes. The condemned, however grave his crime, remains a soul for whom Christ died, to whom are owed both a just death and the time to repent. We must beware the false gentleness that clothes death in the language of medicine: to call an injection “humane” does not make it equitable. Before this, the Christian's duty is neither revolt nor sneering, but to hold the whole doctrine: the magistrate may lawfully put the guilty to death in equity, and he sins when he does so in cruelty. Let us pray for Christa Pike, and for the repose of Colleen Slemmer, her victim.

Sources. Exodus XX, 13; Genesis IX, 6; Epistle to the Romans XIII, 4 (Vulgate / Douay-Rheims). Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the fifth commandment: on the right of life and death of magistrates exercised “with equity,” and against “cruelty” in the lawful sword.