Trauma Informed Care or the Death Chamber?

Before Tennessee attempted to execute Christa Pike, I wanted to write about a cognitive dissonance I was just unable to shake or let go. Just the irony of the situation. As I continued to hear the news day in and day out, to see if this was going to happen given all the controversies surrounding not just the execution itself but the manner in which it would finally be carried out. After the botched execution…stunned, I needed to pause, process, then proceed…

A system can learn the language of trauma and still refuse to be changed by it.

That is the dissonance at the center of Christa Pike’s case for me. The state can recognize childhood harm, mental distress, abuse, neglect, developmental damage, and the ways trauma shapes behavior. It can build policies that tell prison staff to become “trauma-informed”. It can train people to avoid retraumatizing those in custody. Then, when the legal process reaches its final step, it can ask some of those same people to prepare a person for execution.

The state of Tennessee had agreed to attempt to use female officers for Pike’s observation and transportation before execution. There were issues surrounding her options for the method of execution due to both physical and mental health issues and past traumatic events. Those accommodations gave notice that how she was treated mattered. Yet the destination remained a chamber of death where the state intended to end her life.

As someone who works in recovery and corrections, I struggle with that contradiction. Taking steps to reduce distress has value. But how far does our recognition of trauma reach if it can’t influence the decision to inflict irreversible harm?

Pike was 18 years old when she participated in the horrific murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Colleen’s life mattered. Her family’s suffering deserves acknowledgement. Pike’s history of childhood sexual abuse and serious mental illness also deserve to have a seat at the table when the discussion is punishment. Considering those circumstances do not erase responsibility.

Pike’s attorneys reported that seven men sentenced to death in Tennessee for crimes committed at 18, subsequently had their death sentences vacated. Pike’s remained intact. Different cases have different legal histories, but that disparity deserves examination.

Governor Bill Lee denied clemency to Christa Pike on Monday September 28th. On Wednesday, a last-minute federal appeals court stay, briefly interrupted the execution process about an hour before the execution was to take place. And as if in a race to not have a death warrant for the day ‘expire,’ the U.S. Supreme Court in a vote 6-3 to sanction the death penalty over a desperation dissent, lifted it. Within hours, Tennessee proceeded with an execution. Pike survived. News conferences would have witnesses describe this account of ritualized death in a disturbing fashion with Pike assisting them with finding a vein, while later asking questions about if this is normal to feel like this and that it feels as if her arm is going to explode, lifting her head up and sounds of her snoring even after the ‘curtain’ had closed. Pike had been administered what was intended to be two lethal doses of pentobarbital, the limit directed by policy, totaling 10 grams, reportedly enough to ‘put down’ a dozen large animals.

By October 2^nd, her attorneys reported that she was unconscious, on a ventilator, with swollen, burned and blistered arms. The state that had prepared to kill her had sent her to a hospital for lifesaving care.

It’s been reported that she would have been Tennessee’s first woman executed in more than 200 years, and only the nineteenth woman executed nationally since 1976.

There is another number we cannot dismiss: the Death Penalty Information Center reports 203 death-row exonerations since 1973. That does not establish Pike’s innocence. It establishes that a system entrusted with irreversible punishment can be profoundly wrong. Irreversibility is an absolute permanent punishment. That lesson should not end at death row. There are people who will never be given an execution date yet are serving sentences that may ensure they die in prison. If 203 people sentenced to death have later been exonerated, we should be willing to ask what errors, inequities, excessive sentences or evidence of transformation may remain unexamined among those serving life and other extreme sentences. Second Look laws do not guarantee release or erase accountability.

They simply recognize that no human system should be so certain of a decades-old judgement that it refuses ever to examine it again. Some death sentences come with an execution date. Others come in the form of a sentence so long that the prison itself becomes the execution chamber. A justice system capable of getting the first kind profoundly wrong should have a mechanism for taking a second look at the second.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Death Penalty Census: 10,000 capital sentences have been handed down between 1972 and 2026. An incarcerated person sentenced to death in the U.S. is far more likely to have their sentence overturned on appeal than to actually be executed. 49.9% of death sentences have been thrown out by appellate courts due to serious constitutional errors, incompetent trial defense attorneys or prosecutorial misconduct. Fewer than 16% of death sentences resulted in an actual execution. For every 8.2 people who have been exonerated, one person on death row has walked free after having been proven innocent.

Over 550 capital convictions have been reversed specifically because the prosecutors hid exculpatory evidence from the defense.

In 1986, Jerome Bowden in Georgia, a man with a significant cognitive impairment, sparked a major outcry regarding the execution of individuals with intellectual disabilities. His execution occurred shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant a final stay. Bowden did not eat all of his final meal, saying he would save the dessert for later. In 1993, the Supreme Court  brought about outrage in Herrera v. Collins when it ruled that new evidence of actual innocence does not entitle a death-sentenced incarcerated person to a hearing in federal court. Leonel Herrera was in Texas…you have the constitutional right to a “fair trial” but not one that reaches the correct result.

When an execution fails technically, as in this case with Pike, it creates an immediate medical emergency. But when an execution succeeds on an innocent person, the error is permanent and cannot be undone.

We can hold people accountable and protect the public through confinement. We can honor victims while questioning what the state does in their names. Victim grief should not be managed through a death date. Prison staff should not be asked to absorb the psychological burden of executions then be told the institution is trauma informed because it treats daily interactions with more care. The central conflict in trauma informed care or Death Chamber thinking and the state cannot fully honor trauma while reserving the right to stage it.

Remembrance shouldn’t depend on another death.

Human dignity cannot depend on whether someone is easy to feel compassion for.

Recognizing trauma should mean more than making the journey to an execution chamber less frightening!