Following Christa Pike’s “torturous” botched execution, calls to abolish the death sentence in the US are growing.

After Tennessee’s abortive attempt to kill Christa Pike left the prisoner alive but in critical condition and receiving life-saving medical care, prominent attorneys, medical professionals, and members of the religious community are asking for a moratorium on the death sentence in the United States. After Pike received two full injections of pentobarbital, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee called off the execution late on Wednesday, setting a new low for the recent wave of horrifyingly botched executions in US states using the death sentence. She is the only person who has survived receiving 5 mg of the sedative, a high dosage that is usually lethal.

Witnesses heard her still breathing, choking, and straining an hour after the initial injection, and it was discovered that she had a heartbeat. Her current state and the extent to which oxygen deprivation may have caused brain damage are yet unknown, according to her attorneys. The events that transpired were “unimaginably savage,” according to Sandra Babcock, a Cornell law school death sentence scholar who counsels Pike’s legal team. They insist on responsibility.

Lee must now, at the very least, “commute Christa Pike’s death sentence to life imprisonment,” she continued. Another of Pike’s lawyers, Randy Spivey, who was present in the death chamber, called Pike’s ordeal “cruel and torturous”. He said he had personally counted seven needles stuck in Pike’s left arm alone, “one of which appeared to be bent when it was pulled from her”. Pike, 50, was given the death penalty for the vicious murder of Colleen Slemmer, a teenage student, in 1995. She was scheduled to be Tennessee’s first female execution in almost 200 years.

Leading proponents of the death penalty in America told the Guardian that all judicial executions had to be stopped because the botched execution violated the constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.” According to Bryan Stevenson, a well-known death penalty attorney and the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, there have been numerous warnings in recent months about the flaws and unreliability of US executions.

“Nearly a dozen botched executions in recent years should have suspended executions long before now,” he said. Tennessee failed an execution on Wednesday nite for the second time in five months. Tony Carruthers managed to escape the death chamber in May after the execution squad failed to establish an IV line. A new date for his execution has been set for May of next year.

That came after Alabama failed to discover a vein to put two death row inmates, Alan Miller and Kenneth Smith, to death. Death penalty states are rushing to find alternatives to lethal injections after witnessing the spectacle of convicts being sent to their deaths only to have the executions canceled due to fundamental errors in IV procedures.

In recent years, alternative execution methods, such as nitrogen gas and firing squads, have faced scrutiny and legal challenges. Concerns over firing squad executions have also arisen due to bullets missing their intended targets, raising questions about their effectiveness. As instances of botched lethal injections increase, the notion that such procedures are humane and medical is increasingly challenged, with experts asserting that lethal injections cannot be classified as medical practices.