What you need to know
- Ms. Pike was denied clemency and, one hour before her execution, a court halted it then lifted the stay
- She was twice injected with lethal drugs and survived
- Calls are growing for authorities to commute Ms. Pike’s death sentence
“The prolonged suffering – physical and mental – arising from multiple failed execution attempts is abhorrent and cruel,” Volker Türk said in a statement.
The UN rights chief pointed to unresolved questions surrounding Ms. Pike’s fair trial, saying they raised additional concerns about proceeding with another execution attempt.
The statement comes amid what the UN office described as an increase in the number of executions in the United States, with the Pike case renewing attention to the human rights implications of capital punishment in the country, including safeguards for fair trials and the treatment of people subjected to repeated execution attempts.
‘No place in any society’
Mr. Türk reiterated the UN’s opposition to capital punishment, stating that “the death penalty has no place in any society.”
Nine UN Human Rights Council-appointed experts echoed those calls.
“The state of Tennessee must immediately and irrevocably end this cruelty by commuting Christa Pike’s death sentence,” the experts said on Thursday.
“Not one but two botched execution attempts are a flagrant breach of the prohibition of torture and arbitrary deprivation of life and show why [the] death penalty should be prohibited everywhere,” they said.
Rights experts are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, are mandated to monitor and report on specific thematic issues or country situations, are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work.
