Christa Gail Pike v. Tennessee

I. This Court has never endorsed mental suffering and psychological terror as cognizable in a methods of execution challenge under the Eighth Amendment. The Circuit Courts and state courts are divided on this issue. Christa Pike, a female prisoner diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder from her rapes starting as a toddler, is sure or very likely to experience severe mental suffering and superadded psychological terror under Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol. Is her claim of mental suffering and psychological terror cognizable under the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution? II. Contrary to this Court’s precedents, the United States Constitution, and the Tennessee Constitution, Tennessee Supreme Court Rule 12(4)(E) extinguishes a prisoner’s right to challenge methods of execution in Tennessee and brings under that court’s purview the sole authority to screen and weed-out challenges to the State of Tennessee’s method of execution. Does Tennessee Supreme Court Rule 12(4)(E) violate this Court’s precedents, the Due Process Cause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and the Tennessee Constitution?