A death sentence is one thing, a botched death sentence is another, and declaring a viable life brain dead is a violation of human rights as well as a violation of the law. No one is declared brain dead by accident. Who is waiting for her organs?
Christa Pike cannot be treated as a THING. She is not a thing. She is a human being capable of feelings. She has a conscience and I am sure she made her peace with her maker, but, her being declared brain dead opens up an entirely different venue of insult to this woman.
When I worked in intensive care there was only one way of declaring a patient brain dead. An EEG was ordered by the attending physician after consulting with the family/significant other. That EEG had to be repeated on three consecutive days and read by a neurologist capable of declaring a person dead by brain death. There is just no way, unless there was complete incompetency (which is possible considering all the incompetency to date), for any neurologist to declare a person brain dead without proper protocols. It looks like conspiracy to commit murder against a prisoner already damaged by prison staff incompetency overseen by the Governor.
Regardless of how anyone views these circumstances, it is a completely different issue today and requires Christa to be transferred to a place safe for her habeas corpus.
This is new precedent. It cannot be taken lightly. This is about a prisoner on life support because the State of Tennessee insisted on carryout an execution even the prisoner knew would be botched. This is an outrageous reality. There needs to be court proceedings to find the way forward. I am sure some people see this as straight forward and execute the damn woman. WRONG. This is entirely a new set of circumstances without rules to govern the outcome. That means any other prisoner can face uncertainty in their sentence being carried out and there is the issue of declaring a prisoner dead when they are not. No magic worked on Christa Pike. She woke up because her mind was still viable. This is an outrage and carries enormous weight in the care prisoners are provided by any prison system. if this is treated with indifference and simply looked at as a method of ending a life, the State of Tennessee is too dangerous an administration to be considered responsible.
The victim's family can sue for damages, but, they cannot sue to demand a sentence to be carried out with such extenuating circumstances and precedent. There is a lot of pain and suffering here. Society needs to make sure that doesn't translate into danger to other prisoners.
