The botched execution of Christa Pike
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Christa Pike was sentenced to death in Tennessee for a 1995 murder she committed when she was 18. Now in the hospital in critical condition, she is the first person to ever survive lethal injection in the United States. According to Pike’s lawyers, the botched execution spanned more than two hours. Christa Pike "has just experienced the most agonizing attempt at lethal injection in the country's history," says Sandra Babcock, director of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide. Babcock says Pike should have never been sentenced to death because she was an "immature 18-year-old" with a history of severe childhood and sexual trauma who "was not receiving medication for post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder at the time of [the murder], which she committed with her abusive boyfriend at the time."
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