He oversaw Christa Pike's botched execution. Now he compares himself to Jesus

The doctor who was supposed to declare Christa Pike dead says she still deserves to die, and that the backlash against him is like what Jesus faced.

Dr. Mark Fowler is the physician Tennessee pays to help carry out executions. On 30 September he was in the death chamber when two doses of pentobarbital failed to kill Pike. She survived her own execution and later started walking again in hospital, while Tennessee froze its death chamber and ordered a review.

A month later, Fowler has given his first interview since it happened. He is not sorry, and he is not stepping back.

Who is the doctor Tennessee pays to run its executions?

He is a contracted physician, not a prison staff member. Tennessee pays him $3,000 for every execution he works, according to a deposition he gave last year.

Fowler was also in the room in May when staff spent more than 90 minutes trying to set a backup IV line for Tony Carruthers before giving up and calling it off. He waved away Carruthers' reactions that day as "a bit of theater."

So Pike's case was the second Tennessee execution this year that Fowler worked on and that went wrong. He told New York Magazine's Intelligencer it was the first time he had agreed to speak about either one.

What does he say happened the night Christa Pike didn't die?

He blames the people who placed the IV line, not the drug.

"The people who place the IV lines should thereafter be observant about what's happening with them as the medicine goes in," Fowler said. "Pike complained of pain in her arm. They should have stopped and reassessed, and they didn't."

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That matches what death penalty experts told the BBC and Al Jazeera at the time: The needle likely missed her vein, so much of the drug went into the tissue of her arm instead of her blood. Fowler's account puts the blame on the staff who should have noticed and stopped.

Few doctors will even take this job. Major medical bodies, including the American Medical Association, bar members from taking part in executions, which is part of why so few states can find a doctor willing to do it. Fowler is one of a shrinking number who still will.

Photo: SCOTUS / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

Does he still think Christa Pike should die?

Yes, without hedging. "I lament that I am having to deal with Christa Pike, who bludgeoned another woman to death," he said. "She is what she is."

Pike was sent to death row for killing her classmate Colleen Slemmer in 1995. Fowler said she should still be executed, if only to give Slemmer's mother "a sense of justice."

He also said he has "no doubt" that people sentenced to death deserve to die for their crimes. At the same time, he has said capital punishment in America is probably not applied fairly across the board, a rare moment of nuance in an interview where he mostly defends his own role.

Why does he compare the backlash to Jesus?

Fowler has shut down his social media accounts since the backlash began. He has described himself as an evangelical Christian who sees no conflict between his faith, his oath as a doctor and his work helping the state carry out executions.

In the same interview, he likened the criticism he has faced since the botched execution to the kind of criticism Jesus faced, framing himself as someone being punished for doing what he believes is right. He thinks critics want to shame him into quitting.

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"People will say, 'Why don't you just walk away from this?'" he said. "And the answer is, that's exactly what the advocates against the death penalty want. They felt that if they could humiliate me I would step back from it, because I promise you, there ain't anybody else in Tennessee going to sign up for it now. I cannot be pushed off a course that I find correct. I refuse to compromise."

Photo: Nheyob / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

How many times has this doctor's work gone wrong this year?

Twice, by his own account, in the space of five months.

Both executions were in Tennessee. Both used pentobarbital. Both times, Fowler was the physician on hand. He has not said whether he would take the same role a third time, but nothing in his interview suggests he would turn it down.

Pike's lawyers have not responded publicly to Fowler's comments. Neither has Colleen Slemmer's family, whose mother called the botched execution a "mess" when it happened.

Is he fit to keep doing this job?

He says he is, in blunt terms. "I'm not an evil, vicious person," Fowler said. "I'm not unscrupulous. I'm not uncaring, and I'm not incompetent."

He compared placing an IV line to a skill almost anyone can master. "It's like riding a bicycle," he said, "and, frankly, the motor skills and neurological skills required to ride a bicycle are far more complex than placing an IV line."

On the ethics of his work, he argues someone has to do it. "How can you morally say, 'I'm for the death penalty so long as somebody else does the work?'" he said. "I do things that nobody wants to do."

South Africans abolished the death penalty in 1995, the same year Pike killed Colleen Slemmer, after the Constitutional Court ruled it violated the right to life. The debate Fowler is having with his critics in Tennessee is one South Africa settled three decades ago, and has not reopened since.

Asked how he wants to be remembered, Fowler did not mention Pike, Carruthers or the death chamber. "I'd like to be remembered as a Renaissance man," he said. "Someone who has an advanced appreciation of life."