Real reason doctor who saved Christa Pike after botched execution still wants her dead

When Christa Pike survived her execution, the doctor in the room helped bring her back. Now he has explained why he still thinks she should die.

Christa Pike, Tennessee’s only woman on death row, was supposed to be executed on September 30, but she survived. Dr. Mark Fowler was the doctor assigned to declare her dead.

Speaking to New York magazine’s Intelligencer, he described what happened that night.

He describes sitting in a waiting room during the execution, and when he was called into the chamber, he expected to pronounce Pike dead. Instead, he says the warden told him: “She’s not dead.”

“I thought, ‘Well, in human beings there’s a spectrum of responses to medications and we’ll give it a few more minutes,’” he said. But the minutes passed, and Pike was still alive. Fowler began to fear she would suffer permanent brain damage.

He eventually found that she was in a coma. The deputy commissioner then called off the execution, and Fowler immediately started treating Pike.

A doctor who won’t back down

Even after working to save her, Fowler says his view hasn’t changed. He believes Tennessee should go back to its old three-drug lethal injection method, which included potassium chloride, instead of the single drug, pentobarbital, that was used on Pike.

He also admitted mistakes were made. When Pike complained of pain in her arm, he said, “they should have stopped and reassessed, and they didn’t.” Still, he sees her execution as a form of justice for the mother of her victim.

He says he’s faced backlash, but won’t budge. “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.

“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.”

Pike has spent more than 30 years on death row for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old who was a fellow student in the Job Corps program. On the night of the execution, she was given two doses of pentobarbital and survived both. She was rushed to hospital, where she spent five days unconscious on a ventilator. Doctors didn’t expect her to live.

Five days on a ventilator, then rehab

Against the odds, Pike recovered and was moved to the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center. 

In her first statement since that night, she said the pain hasn’t stopped. “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 also said she was “deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position.”

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee told WSMV that Pike remains in prison under state law.

“I suspect her sentence will be the same as before unless determined otherwise by the courts,” he said.