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- Clemency Ms. Pike was overruled and, an hour before his execution, the court halted it and revoked the suspended sentence
- He was twice injected with lethal drugs and survived
- Calls are growing for authorities to commute 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 human rights chief pointed to unresolved questions surrounding the fair trial of Ms Pike, and said they raised additional concerns about moving forward with another execution attempt.
The statement comes amid what the UN office described as a rise in the number of executions in the United States, with Pike’s case bringing renewed attention to the implications of the death penalty for human rights in the country, including the protection of fair trials and the treatment of people subjected to repeated execution attempts.
‘No place in any society’
Mr Türk reiterated the UN’s rejection of the death penalty, stating that “the death penalty has no place in any society.”
Nine United Nations Human Rights Council-designated experts echoed the call.
“The state of Tennessee must immediately and irrevocably end this atrocity by commuting Christa Pike’s death sentence,” experts said Thursday.
“Not one but two failed execution attempts constitute a clear violation of the prohibition on torture and arbitrary deprivation of life and show why [the] the death penalty should be banned everywhere,” they said.
Human rights experts are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, mandated to monitor and report on thematic issues or specific country situations, are not UN staff and do not receive salaries for their work.
