A former death row inmate has revealed he was devastated to hear the news about Christa Pike’s failed execution , describing it as “torture.” Rejon Taylor was among 37 inmates on federal death row whose death sentences were commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole by former president Joe Biden shortly before leaving office amid concerns that President Donald Trump would quickly resume federal executions in his second term. In a phone interview with Newsweek on Monday, Taylor said: “When I heard about her, it really brought me to tears. She was tortured.” Taylor’s comments come as few details have emerged about Pike’s condition as she remains in hospital days after the failure in Tennessee’s execution chamber at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
Pike survived two doses of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital on Wednesday night. The drug failed to kill her, but her lawyers said her arms were burned and blistered. If the execution had been successful, she would have been the first woman put to death in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
In an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Pike’s lawyer, Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell, said Pike has remained unconscious and on a ventilator at a hospital since her failed execution. Newsweek has contacted Ferrell for further comment via email. Taylor told Newsweek that he believes Pike should be granted clemency after what she endured.
They gotta grant her something,” he insisted. On CNN, Ferrell repeated calls for Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, a Republican, to commute Pike’s sentence: “I think, at the very least, the governor should commute Ms. Pike's death sentence to a life sentence.
And we had already asked that the governor commute her for many good reasons. I think she's spent over 30 years in prison, most of that in solitary confinement, only to be taken out and not executed.” Taylor also noted that he and Pike were both teenagers when they committed the crimes that led to their death sentences. Prosecutors said Pike feared Slemmer was a romantic rival and lured her to a secluded area where she and her boyfriend tortured and killed her.
Pike did not deny her guilt, but her attorneys argued a death sentence was not appropriate for a crime committed at that age by a teenager with untreated mental illness after a childhood of brutal sexual abuse and neglect. And in her clemency petition, Pike said she only wanted to fight Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied attack when she couldn’t “put the brakes on.” Taylor, now 42, was sentenced to death in 2008 for fatally shooting Atlanta restaurant owner Guy Luck in 2003. His lawyers said Taylor had "discharged his gun in a panic" as Luck tried to grab a gun inside a van in Tennessee.
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