Bishops urge Tennessee to commute death sentence after botched execution

By Devin Watkins

Tennessee’s Catholic Bishops joined the US state’s Episcopal Bishops to issue an ecumenical appeal in the wake of the twice-failed execution of Christa Pike on September 30.

In their joint statement issued on October 1, the Bishops asked Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to spare Ms. Pike’s life and prevent another attempt to carry out her death sentence.

Ms. Pike, 50, survived two doses of a lethal injection drug and was taken to hospital.

She had been sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.

Governor Lee subsequently suspended executions for the remainder of 2026 and ordered an independent review.

The Bishops acknowledged the gravity of Ms. Slemmer’s murder and the immeasurable suffering of her family, stressing that their appeal upheld the state’s responsibility to hold perpetrators of violence accountable.

“Yet accountability need not require another death,” they wrote.

Affirming that “every human being bears the image of God,” the Bishops stressed that even grave wrongdoing cannot erase a person’s dignity or exclude the possibility of repentance and redemption.

They welcomed the independent review but urged the governor to commute Ms. Pike’s sentence to a punishment that would protect the public while preserving her life.

“Such an act does not deny justice,” wrote Tennessee’s Catholic and Episcopal Bishops. “It declares that justice need not become vengeance and that the State of Tennessee can choose restraint, human dignity, and mercy.”

Separately, Catholic Mobilizing Network, a US-based organization that advocates abolition of the death penalty, called on Americans to “never accept state-sanctioned killing.”

“There is nothing normal about taking a life, and [Wednesday] night’s horrifying events reminds us of that,” Krisanne Valliancourt Murphy, the organization’s Executive Director, said in a statement.

“We pray for Ms. Pike’s current condition, and we pray for the victim Colleen Slemmer’s family as this situation must surely be retraumatizing,” she added.

Ms. Valliancourt Murphy recalled Tennessee’s previous botched execution of Tony Carruthers in May 2026, which also involved an attempted lethal injection of pentobarbital.

“The Church teaches that the death penalty is ‘inadmissible’ because every human life is sacred, no matter the harm one has caused or suffered, and because we have more effective ways to protect society than to take another life,” said Ms. Valliancourt Murphy.

Ahead of the botched execution, Tennessee’s three Catholic Bishops had petitioned Governor Lee to halt Ms. Pike’s execution.

They recalled the Church’s opposition to the death penalty as “an attack on human dignity and unnecessary to protect society while still punishing those convicted of horrible crimes.”

Read also 24/04/2026 Pope: Human dignity is not lost even after serious crimes are committed Pope Leo XIV offers his support for those advocating for the abolition of the death penalty in the United States and around the world and insists on the importance of safeguarding ...

Pope Leo XIV upheld efforts to abolish the death penalty in a video message to an event at the DePaul University on April 24, 2026.

“The right to life is the very foundation of every other human right,” said the Pope. “For this reason, only when a society safeguards the sanctity of human life will it flourish and prosper.”

In 2018, Pope Francis revised the Catechism of the Catholic Church to state that the Church officially opposes the death penalty:

“Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good. Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption. Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,’ (Pope Francis, Address to Participants in the Meeting organized by the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, 11 October 2017), and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.” (CCC 2267)