Tennessee death row prisoner Christa Pike was rushed to hospital still alive after receiving two lethal injections, her legal representatives have confirmed. Pike's defence team submitted an urgent motion to stop the execution while it was underway, stating: "Ms Pike has lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat and is audibly snoring."
Life-saving measures after injections
One of Pike's solicitors informed the BBC that she was "being provided life-saving measures" after the two injections were given. An expert in capital punishment described it as an unprecedented failure. "We have not been informed as to her condition," Pike's lawyers said in a statement.
Governor Bill Lee announced in a statement that he has commissioned "a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred" and that planned executions will be suspended for the remainder of this year. "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.
Execution protocol and legal challenges
The Tennessee Department of Correction released a statement confirming they "followed every step of the State's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General's Office." According to the state's execution protocol, a secondary set of drug syringes should be administered "if the inmate is not deceased" after the first set. However, it fails to specify the procedure should the individual remain alive following the second set.
Pike had been scheduled to become the first woman executed in more than 200 years on Wednesday, but the execution was postponed while the court examined whether Pike's claims of childhood sexual abuse had been adequately taken into account during her sentencing. The Supreme Court's three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented from the ruling, with Ms Sotomayor noting that it paves the way for the execution to take place "before her still-pending legal challenges to her conviction can be properly considered". Despite an appeals court halting the lethal injection merely an hour before its scheduled commencement, the high court ultimately determined that the execution would go ahead.
Witness accounts and background
Authorities administered two doses of pentobarbital to Pike, according to court filings submitted by her legal team late on Wednesday. Robin M Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre, described what Pike endured as "singular and unparalleled". Seven other individuals have survived medical complications arising from the execution team's inability to establish venous access for administering lethal injection drugs, though none have survived after receiving the actual execution drugs, she explained.
Pike's legal representatives stated: "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." Media observers watching from an adjacent room reported that officials drew back the curtains to the execution chamber at 7.27pm, revealing Pike secured to a gurney. Pike remained conscious and at one point lifted her head to enquire of prison officials whether her arm was meant to feel that way. The nature of her concern was unclear. By 8.26pm, execution witnesses noted that the second dose of pentobarbital had been delivered. Pike could still be heard snoring behind the drawn curtain until the microphone was switched off at 8.53pm. At that moment, an announcement was made to escort media witnesses from the premises.
Pike was found guilty aged 18, along with her boyfriend, of stabbing and beating to death 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their fellow student at a job training facility in Knoxville. The case garnered widespread media attention after Colleen was discovered with an inverted pentagram - a symbol linked to satanic groups - carved into her chest. Pike has maintained she did not carve the symbol herself. Despite Pike's assertions that she did not 'even realise the gravity of what I'd done', two fellow inmates at the facility subsequently testified that she had boasted about the murder both before and afterwards, even displaying a fragment of Colleen's skull to them.
Colleen Slemmer's mother made the journey from Florida to Tennessee for the execution, disclosing that she has spent decades awaiting the implementation of Pike's sentence. She said: "Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run. Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst." Following the killing, Pike received diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she stated her intention had been merely to fight Ms Slemmer, but she killed her in a frenzied assault when she could not "put the brakes on". "I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I'd done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone's child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime," Pike said in a statement.
