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Christa Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital during a failed execution in Tennessee, prompting Governor Bill Lee to suspend all scheduled executions and order an independent investigation.
Christa Pike survived an attempted execution by lethal injection at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee, after receiving two doses of pentobarbital. The 50-year-old inmate was taken to a hospital by ambulance instead of a hearse and was receiving life-saving medical care.
Her lawyer Randy Spivey said her condition was unknown. She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Governor Bill Lee ordered a suspension of all scheduled executions in Tennessee for the rest of the year and a third-party investigation into the failed attempt. Lee, a Republican, had denied Pike's clemency appeal to commute her sentence to life in prison on Monday.
Gov. Lee Suspends Executions After Failed Attempt
He told reporters: There is no one that wanted what happened last night to happen. It's a tragedy, and it's deeply disturbing to me that that has happened in this state. The people deserve better and we're going to make sure that happens. The investigation needs to be done thoroughly, however long that takes and whatever process is required to make sure we get to the very end of it and all the questions are answered.
It was the second time this year that Tennessee was unable to complete an execution, though in the other case officials could not find a suitable vein for an IV line so the drugs were not administered. Pike was strapped to a gurney with IVs in her arm when prison officials raised the curtain to the execution room at 7.27pm.
Her spiritual adviser stood beside her, spoke to her, sang a song with lyrics that included the repeated phrase I love you, and stroked her forehead. Pike raised her head, looked around, smiled, and then said her arm was hurting, asking a prison official if it was supposed to feel that way. At 7.37pm, ten minutes in, she sighed as the IV fed from a control room adjacent to the death chamber.
At 7.41pm, a rock or paperweight about the size of a golf ball was placed on the ledge, apparently coinciding with a protocol direction that a five-minute countdown begins after the drugs are administered. Officials closed the curtain at 7.46pm, and Pike's spiritual adviser left the chamber. The curtain rose again three minutes later. The Tennessee lethal injection protocol calls for a second round of pentobarbital if the inmate is not deceased after the first round.
Pike appeared to begin losing consciousness and started making a sound like snoring. She continued for the next hour, a sign she was alive long after she was expected to be dead. Officials closed the curtain again at 8.06pm, and for the next 40 minutes Pike could be heard from behind it, breathing in a rhythmic, regular pattern that sounded like snoring. Witnesses described distressing scenes.
Witnesses Describe 'Distressing' Execution Scene
Tori Gessner, a reporter and anchor at WKRN of Nashville, said nothing about the execution was normal or typical. She heard Pike snoring loudly. When the curtains closed the final time at 8.05pm, witnesses could still hear her snoring, which developed into a snore squeak and then a snore again. Even at 8.53pm, when the microphone was cut off, they could still hear snoring.
Gessner also said Pike was heard saying her arm felt like it was about to burst open and asked if that was normal. Catherine Sweeney, a reporter at Nashville Public Radio WPLN, said Pike was very ragged at the end. Sweeney said Pike lifted her head up and was looking around. At one point, Pike said there was a spot that was burning and hurting, and asked if that was normal.
None of it was normal. John North, an investigative producer at WBIR television in Knoxville and a witness at the Riverbend institution, said when he left the building she was probably still alive. Inside the prison, attorney Randy Spivey said he demanded access to a telephone at about 8.22pm to contact other lawyers on the team. He demanded the execution be halted and that life-saving medical care be given to Pike.
He received confirmation about 8.50pm that an ambulance was on the way. At 8.53pm, an announcement told witnesses to exit the area. Fire trucks and ambulances arrived in front of the prison at about 9.14pm. Before the execution, Pike was allowed to give a final statement.
She said she was going to leave this world with love for those on her side and also the ones angry with her. She also said she was at peace, ready to be free, and called it a happy day. When the prison warden asked if she had any last words, she said: I'm ready to be free. This is a happy day.
Lawyer Steve Ferrell said Pike feared there would be complications with the lethal injection because of a lifelong blood disorder that made it tough to get needles into her veins. Spivey said he counted at least seven needles that were used in her left arm alone. Spivey said Pike was not just cooperative but was helping to instruct the people placing the IV lines as to where they might put them.
Strapped to the gurney, Pike asked prison officials if her arm was supposed to feel that way. It is unclear if that was after the first dose entered her body, as officials do not share that information. The chamber's curtains were closed, suggesting it had been five minutes since the first dose was administered. An hour after officials first raised the curtains, witnesses reported that a second dose of pentobarbital was administered.
Pike's lawyers filed an emergency motion with the Tennessee Supreme Court seeking to immediately halt and stay the execution. They said she was in unnecessary agony and the procedure violated her right to be executed free of cruel and unusual punishment. An appeals court stopped the lethal injection an hour before it was scheduled to begin, but the US Supreme Court allowed it to proceed.
Legal and Ethical Implications of Botched Execution
Commentary from Austin Sarat, associate dean of the faculty and William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, described what happened to Pike as gruesome. He wrote that no one deserves what she went through, not even those who commit horrible crimes. He noted that botched executions are nothing new in US history. In the era when hangings were common, some condemned people were decapitated.
Later, when the electric chair was in vogue, every now and again, someone would catch fire during an electrocution. And nitrogen hypoxia, the US newest execution method, has also raised concerns. But of all the ways we have tried to execute people, lethal injection has the worst track record. More than 8% of all lethal injection executions have been botched.
Pike survived Tennessee effort to execute her with lethal doses of pentobarbital. It was the first time someone received a drug intended to kill them but did not die. One expert told the New York Times: This event is the worst we have seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era. There is no precedent.
The Crime That Sentenced Christa Pike
Moreover, there is almost no precedent for what should happen next. Sarat wrote that it is time to give up on the fantasy that this country will ever be able to find an execution technology that is safe, reliable and humane. We have not found one yet, and we never will. He described Pike crime: Pike lured Slemmer to a wooded area near the University of Tennessee Agricultural Campus with the promise of marijuana.
With the help of her boyfriend, Pike tortured Slemmer before beating her to death with a chunk of asphalt. A pentagram was also carved into her body. Pike was barely 18 years old at the time. She was herself the victim of violence and abuse throughout her life.
Her lawyers claimed that the execution should not go forward because using lethal injection on her would be cruel. Little did she know what would be in store for her. As allowed by its execution protocol, state officials in Tennessee administered two doses of pentobarbital that were supposed to be enough to end her life.
However, as NBC notes, instead of killing her, it left her snoring and complaining about pain, as well as kicking her feet so often that she knocked off the sheets laid on her. After Governor Bill Lee was contacted, he authorized the execution team to stand down, and Pike was taken to a hospital. This is not the first time that Lee has received a call about an execution gone awry.
In May, he had also agreed to stop the execution of Tony Carruthers when officials could not proceed. Lee granted him a one-year reprieve. Now he and his colleagues in Tennessee will have to decide what to do about Pike. So far, he has only called a halt to the one other execution scheduled in the state this year and ordered a review of what happened during Pike execution.
Historical Precedent for Execution Survivors
Sarat argued that is not enough. The last time someone survived when a method of execution that was supposed to kill them failed to do so was in 1946, when Louisiana tried to put a man named Willie Francis to death in the electric chair. Francis survived because the electric chair malfunctioned and the current was not strong enough to kill him.
Writing for the court, Justice Stanley Reed said: Even the fact that petitioner has already been subjected to a current of electricity does not make his subsequent execution any more cruel in the constitutional sense than any other execution. The fact that an unforeseeable accident prevented the prompt consummation of the sentence cannot, it seems to us, add an element of cruelty to a subsequent execution. Francis was executed soon after.
Sarat wrote that this has happened only nine other times, including with Pike. Four of those execution survivors were killed by a second execution attempt, while others escaped that fate. Some died on death row. In another case, the state agreed not to try to execute the person a second time, and now three of them are still alive.
Sarat wrote that Tennessee had its chance to execute Christa Pike. It should not get to try again. To do so would be a form of double jeopardy that is prohibited by the constitution. And it would be cruel.
Justice Harold Burton, who dissented in the Francis case, got it right when he said that no one should be subject to a second execution. The intent of the executioner, Burton wrote, cannot lessen the torture or excuse the result. In his view, when the state seeks to execute someone, they have a duty to make sure that there is no failure. It does not get a do-over.
In the end, this is not just a matter of what the law says. It is a matter of simple human decency.
7NewsSydney 
GuardianAus:Witnesses detail horror of Tennessee woman’s botched execution: ‘None of it was normal’ 
theage:How Christa Pike’s botched Tennessee execution unfolded, minute by minute 
brisbanetimes:How Christa Pike’s botched Tennessee execution unfolded, minute by minuteThis story was compiled and edited by the HeadTopics newsroom and HT AI from the reports above.
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