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Christa Pike was set to become the first woman executed in the US state of Tennessee in more than 200 years. Instead, she is fighting for life.
Christa Pike was sentenced to death for the murder of Colleen Slemmer, a crime committed when she was 18 years old. Christa Gail Pike had been waiting to die for more than 30 years when she received her first lethal injection.
After the second dose, she was still waiting. Pike was set to become the first woman executed in the US state of Tennessee in more than 200 years, and the only person executed in the state's modern death penalty era for a crime committed at just 18 years of age. But on Wednesday night, local time, having refused her last meal, the 50-year-old received two doses of pentobarbital at a maximum security prison in Nashville and did not die.
Instead, witnesses were ordered to leave the facility, the curtain was drawn on the execution chamber, and Pike was rushed to a nearby hospital for "life-saving" medical care, according to her legal team. WKRN journalist Tori Gastner, a witness of five Tennessee executions to date, spoke outside the prison shortly after emergency services were called.
"She was clearly alive, she was clearly still breathing … we could all hear that. "Pike's legal team has since called for an emergency stay of execution. Previously, they had argued Pike's "small veins" and other medical conditions made lethal injection a more risky procedure.
"I've felt more love in the last two weeks than I have my entire life," she wrote in a letter sent to NBC News earlier this week. Two teens at a Tennessee training program In January of 1995, Pike and Colleen Slemmer were students at the Job Corps Center in Knoxville, Tennessee. She was sweet and helpful, volunteering to paint her school and at Special Olympics competitions, her mother, May Martinez, said.
AP: May Martinez"She worked with the handicapped children at lunch and … made sure they could get around," she told local outlet The Nashville Banner. It was that aptitude with technology which prompted her grandfather to suggest she start taking computer courses at Job Corps. Job Corps was marketed as a "government-run residential program designed to help troubled teens gain job skills", according to court documents. By that time, she had already experienced a lifetime of abuse.
Court filings noted she had been exposed to alcohol in utero, something which left her with severe brain damage and limited impulse control. More records showed severe neglect, alleged repeated sexual abuse, and drug use from as young as nine years old.
"The Job Corps was an opportunity for Christa to 'make something' of herself and to make her parents proud," a court petition said. "Students routinely carried razor blades or box cutters for protection," documents said. "The administrators at Job Corps created an environment in which Christa was forced to rely upon her family's earlier teachings. On January 11, 1995, Pike told another student, Kim Iloilo, she wanted to kill Ms Slemmer.
Pike believed Ms Slemmer had been "trying to get boyfriend", a 17-year-old called Tadaryl Shipp. Witnesses later said Shipp, another Job Corps student, and Pike had a tumultuous, controlling and physically abusive relationship. At 8pm the next day, the pair were seen walking away from the Job Corps building, along with Shipp and another student, Shadolla Peterson.
She added they were also going to get drugs, which Pike said were hidden in nearby Tyson Park, just minutes away from the University of Tennessee campus. Christa Pike talked investigators through what had happened.
"Later that night, Pike went to Iloilo's room and told she had just killed Slemmer," Supreme Court documents said. Loading Instagram content "Pike showed Iloilo the piece of skull and told her that she had cut the victim's throat six times, beaten her, and thrown asphalt at the victim's head.
"Pike told Iloilo that the victim had begged … but Pike did not stop because the victim continued to talk. "At a class later that day, she pointed to brown spots on her shoes, saying, "that ain't mud on my shoes, that's blood". At the same time, a University of Tennessee Grounds Department employee had discovered Ms Slemmer's body.
The employee later said her body was "so badly beaten that he had first mistaken it for the corpse of an animal". Decades in a cell 'smaller than a parking space'Her boyfriend, Shipp, just a few months younger than her and therefore a minor at the time of the crime, received a life sentence. The other teen, then-19-year-old Peterson, received probation in exchange for testifying against Pike and Shipp.
A Supreme Court judge stated Pike showed "a total disregard for human life and human suffering". As the only woman on Tennessee's death row, Pike has spent "22 to 23 hours a day in a room smaller than a parking space". Her cell inside a Nashville women's prison has a small window in the door for light, a narrow bed, a desk, a bookcase and a toilet.
"Ms Pike's cell has one outward-facing slit in the wall, three to four feet tall and three to four inches wide," a court filing said. A last-ditch plea for 'mercy' before execution given green light After years of attempted appeals and last-ditch efforts, Pike's final request for clemency was denied on September 28. Her lawyers had filed a 226-page plea earlier this year, detailing Pike's early abuse, her actions behind bars, and pleading for "mercy".
("There is a picture of Christa as a child I think often about," her assistant post-conviction defender, Randall Spivey, wrote.
"She is outside, her curly red hair is slightly blown by the wind. She has big brown eyes, and her mouth is drawn tight in a straight line.
" think of this picture because I know it was taken about the time Christa was first sexually abused. " More than 100 organisations and experts had also called on Governor Bill Lee to commute Pike's sentence to prison without parole. A last-minute reprieve was granted by an appeals court just an hour before the execution was set to go ahead.
Botched execution attempt and 'emergency' medical care Shortly before 7pm, local time, media witnesses reported Pike said her last words, stating she was ready to be "free".
"At 7:34 she said, 'my arm feels like it's about to burst open,'" journalist Tori Gastner told waiting media, flipping through pages of notes. "The curtains closed first at 7:46, and she was clearly still alive … breathing and snoring. "The curtains opened again three minutes later, she was snoring very loudly at that point. The curtains close again at 8.05.
"The curtains remained closed despite repeated requests from media for them to be reopened. " because we could still audibly hear her snoring, and we were looked at like, 'uh, we don't know,'" Ms Gastner said. Pike's execution is now at least the second botched attempt in Tennessee this year, following an hours-long lethal injection attempt in May.
In that attempt, death row inmate Tony Carruthers was given a one-year reprieve after the execution team was unable to complete a back-up IV line or a central line. According to Carruthers's legal team the execution team punctured him more than a dozen times while trying to complete the attempt. According to the Death Penalty Information Center lethal injection has the highest rate of being botched of any execution method.
Will Pucket, a journalist from Knoxville outlet WVLT, said the execution seemed "very out of sorts" from early on.
"Her lip quivered at one point, it sounded like she was choking," he said, adding Pike lifted herself up multiple times after the drug was administered. The Tennessee Department of Corrections later issued a statement saying it stood by the "consistently effective" lethal injection protocol followed. But on Thursday, Governor Bill Lee suspended all scheduled executions in Tennessee and ordered an independent review of the second failed attempt to execute Pike.
Pike remained in a critical condition on Thursday, Mr Spivey told reporters"But we do know that she is alive right now and receiving life-saving medical care.
"Ms Slemmer's mother, Ms Martinez, travelled from Florida to Nashville to attend the execution. "I'll hold Colleen's picture up to remind her of what she did," Ms Martinez told local outlet WBIR earlier this week. "Saying something and talking to her now, after all these years, that she never apologised … what's the point? " September 20, 10 days before the execution was set to go ahead, would have been Ms Slemmer's 51st birthday.
Ms Martinez did not speak to media after leaving the facility. Neither did Texas Department of Corrections officials.
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