Video version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YyWgUWwqD8

Transcript version of Christa Pike's lawyer being interviewed this morning:

Chapter 1: Current medical condition

0:00

0 seconds

Mr. Frell, uh, your team said in a court filing that Miss Pike is in the hospital on a ventilator. What's her condition this morning?

0:07

7 seconds

Uh, it remains the same. She's still in the hospital on a ventilator, critically ill. Uh, we don't really know the

0:14

14 seconds

prognosis yet and may not know for several days.

0:17

17 seconds

Was she ever conscious after this? Has she been able to say anything? Not that I am aware of. No.

0:24

24 seconds

On Thursday night, the hospital staff was trying to clear the two doses of pentobarbatl from her body. Were they able to?

0:32

32 seconds

No, that's still the ongoing process right now.

0:35

35 seconds

Have the doctors been able to explain at all how she survived these two attempts at execution?

0:42

42 seconds

Uh, they haven't. And and I need to emphasize that uh you know, we are not getting uh we're not consulting directly with the doctors. She has a medical

0:50

50 seconds

power of attorney uh that gives us information. Uh, I'm not sure what all they may have told that person, but this is the extent of what we know.

1:00

1 minute

They haven't let you in to see her.

1:03

1 minute, 3 seconds

Uh, no. Uh, and um, she is guarded. I'm not sure who may have seen her. I know I have not seen her.

Chapter 2: State's legal intentions

1:11

1 minute, 11 seconds

The state of Tennessee has not yet said whether it will ultimately try to execute her again. Have you received any indication from the governor's office or

1:19

1 minute, 19 seconds

the Tennessee attorney general that the state intends to seek another execution date?

1:25

1 minute, 25 seconds

No, other than the governor did suspend all executions in Tennessee for the end of this year, which is pretty much the end of his term. Now, gubanatorial

1:34

1 minute, 34 seconds

candidate Marsha Blackburn has uh announced that she would try to uh use the electric chair, which would uh

1:41

1 minute, 41 seconds

require uh the Tennessee legislature to change the law. But uh it remains to be seen what what the future is. And I I

1:49

1 minute, 49 seconds

think one of the the main things that will leave this up in the air for a while is the fact that we don't know what the prognosis is as in the

1:57

1 minute, 57 seconds

long-term prognosis. If she recovers, she may not uh fully recover and there may be uh issues about her competence. I mean, we just don't know any of this.

2:08

2 minutes, 8 seconds

So, we have had no discussions about this. The Tennessee Attorney General's office so far uh has not given us any

2:15

2 minutes, 15 seconds

indications of what their intentions will be.

2:18

2 minutes, 18 seconds

What do you want to happen? What do you think the state should do now?

Chapter 3: Call for commutation

2:24

2 minutes, 24 seconds

I think at the very least the governor should commute Ms. Pike's death sentence to a life sentence. At the very least,

2:31

2 minutes, 31 seconds

we like I said, we don't know what uh her physical state will be, but it is clear that uh she has endured a

2:38

2 minutes, 38 seconds

torturous attempt at executing her. And we had already asked that the governor commute her for for many good reasons. I

2:46

2 minutes, 46 seconds

think she's spent over 30 years in prison, most of that in solitary confinement only to be taken out and not executed, but tried to execute her.

2:57

2 minutes, 57 seconds

and that we don't know right now and we may never know what sort of torture she endured during that process. What where

3:06

3 minutes, 6 seconds

her consciousness was, what physical pain there was, what mental torture she went through. I can tell you that we had

3:14

3 minutes, 14 seconds

a 2 and a half day hearing uh about lethal injection. The special master

3:21

3 minutes, 21 seconds

that was appointed to uh hear the case insisted that Miss Pike be present and listened for two and a half days as to

3:28

3 minutes, 28 seconds

how the state of Tennessee was going to kill her. I think she has been put through some really really bad mental torture

3:37

3 minutes, 37 seconds

and physical torture and that at the very least that deserves a commutation of her death sentence.

Chapter 4: Seeking justice for victims

3:44

3 minutes, 44 seconds

Um there is obviously another side here in terms of the case itself. the family of Colleen SL, the the 19-year-old uh

3:52

3 minutes, 52 seconds

that Christa murdered. Uh Colleen's mother was on the grounds of the prison that night. She was waiting for your client to be executed. I'm wondering

3:59

3 minutes, 59 seconds

what you think justice looks like in terms of the victim.

4:06

4 minutes, 6 seconds

I I I think that's very hard to say. I can tell you what justice shouldn't be for the victim's family and that's uh

4:13

4 minutes, 13 seconds

this long many years of back and forth for her and to be brought here to witness an execution that doesn't

4:21

4 minutes, 21 seconds

happen. Um nothing that anyone can do will bring back Colleen Slimmer. Nothing that anyone can do will make this right

4:30

4 minutes, 30 seconds

for May Martinez, her mother. Um, I can't give any better solution than the

4:37

4 minutes, 37 seconds

fact that Christa has been and may very well continue to be severely punished, harshly punished, and maybe not overly

4:44

4 minutes, 44 seconds

so, but certainly this has been a serious punishment for a very serious and awful crime. Um, I don't I don't

4:54

4 minutes, 54 seconds

think that attempting another execution is going to bring justice.

Chapter 5: Need for process transparency

5:00

5 minutes

It is certainly an odd and unusual situation where the world is waiting, at least as

5:07

5 minutes, 7 seconds

far as I can tell, for your client to recover from these botched execution attempts so the state can kill her for good.

5:18

5 minutes, 18 seconds

That just seems bizarre.

5:21

5 minutes, 21 seconds

It it I as far as I know, it's it's unique. uh in in this country there have been other attempted executions that

5:29

5 minutes, 29 seconds

were botched as in they couldn't get the vain they uh other things went wrong. I

5:35

5 minutes, 35 seconds

don't know of any uh situation where the state says that the execution was carried out exactly as it planned to do

5:43

5 minutes, 43 seconds

and the person survived. And that is a unique situation and I think that your word bizarre is exactly right. And one

5:53

5 minutes, 53 seconds

thing that should definitely come from this is that this needs to be a much more open process. Over a year ago, uh,

6:02

6 minutes, 2 seconds

in the face of another execution, we asked for information about what the state was going to do. A judge ordered

6:09

6 minutes, 9 seconds

one thing to be disclosed, and that was the expiration date of the chemicals they were going to use to execute him.

6:16

6 minutes, 16 seconds

The state immediately filed an emergency motion with the Tennessee Court of Appeals that blocked that order.

6:22

6 minutes, 22 seconds

With Christa Pike's execution, there was a delay. It was supposed to happen at 10:00 a.m. in the that day, and it didn't end up happening till about 8:00

6:30

6 minutes, 30 seconds

that evening. We don't know what drugs there were, whether manufactured, compounded, how well they were preserved, what was done with them. That

6:38

6 minutes, 38 seconds

could have played a role. In order to find out what happened, the state of Tennessee has got to start telling its

6:47

6 minutes, 47 seconds

people exactly what it is doing so that in the democratic process, the people of Tennessee can decide if that's what they want to be done in their name because

6:56

6 minutes, 56 seconds

this torturous execution leaves so many questions that the state of Tennessee will refuse to answer. We

7:03

7 minutes, 3 seconds

don't know who's performing this. uh the people who placed the IV lines who obviously were not able to do it successfully or to me obviously I I you

7:12

7 minutes, 12 seconds

know I don't have definitive answers on what happened but that caused the uh

7:20

7 minutes, 20 seconds

drugs to not effectively circulate and that's probably why Chris Pike survived.

7:24

7 minutes, 24 seconds

But the state of Tennessee had assured us that these were uh people with decades of experience at setting IV lines. Yeah.