Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike survives 2 doses of execution drugs

Tennessee's only female death row inmate has been taken to the hospital after surviving two doses of lethal injection drugs, her lawyers said.

Christa Pike, 50, was alive and snoring loudly after being given two doses of pentobarbital, her attorneys said.

Pike had been scheduled for execution 10 a.m. Wednesday for a killing she committed at age 18. She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement

An appeals court stopped the lethal injection just an hour before it was to start. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned that stay shortly after.

Media witnesses said officials raised the curtains to the execution chamber at 7:27 p.m., showing Pike strapped to a gurney. "I'm going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life, and that is in love," she said in her "last" words.

However, Pike remained awake and at one point raised her head and asked prison officials if her arm was supposed to feel that way. It was not clear what she was referring to.

By 8:26 p.m., witnesses reported that the second dose of pentobarbital had been administered.

Advertisement
Advertisement

Pike continued to be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at 8:53 p.m. At that time, an announcement was made to escort media witnesses out of the area.

Pike's legal team said in a statement to the Tennessean newspaper, "Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution.

"We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy."

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said that he had ordered "a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred" and that the remaining scheduled executions will not take place this year.

Advertisement
Advertisement

"Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the state's most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective," he said.

Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said what Pike experienced was "singular and unparalleled."

Seven other people have survived medical problems caused by an execution team's failure to access a vein to administer lethal injection drugs, but no one has remained alive after receiving the drugs used in such executions, she said.

"I've witnessed, I believe, five executions in Tennessee," said Tori Gessner, a journalist with WKRN News 2 in Nashville. "Nothing about today was normal, typical at all, and the court delay was just the tip of the iceberg."

Advertisement
Advertisement

The Tennessee Department of Correction said that it "followed every step of the state's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the attorney general's office."

The state's execution protocol calls for a secondary set of drug syringes to be administered "if the inmate is not deceased" after the first set. It does not specify what happens if the subject is still alive after the second set.

Lawyers for Pike filed an emergency motion late Wednesday with the Tennessee Supreme Court seeking to immediately halt and stay the execution, saying she was in "unnecessary agony" and that the execution was violating her right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. They also filed motions in the Sixth Circuit and a district court.

Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 after being convicted of first-degree murder of Collen Slemmer the previous year on the University of Tennessee Agricultural campus. Pike was also convicted of attempted first-degree murder of fellow inmate Patricia Jones in 2001.

• About Our Ads