Christa Pike, a death row inmate in Tennessee, survived a botched execution attempt on Wednesday despite receiving two doses of a lethal drug. Her attorneys filed a court document on Friday detailing the failed procedure, which left her unconscious and on a ventilator before she was transferred to a hospital in critical condition.
Execution halted and then allowed
Pike's execution was originally scheduled for 10am on Wednesday but was halted about an hour beforehand when a federal appeals court intervened. Tennessee officials appealed to the US Supreme Court, and after an eight-hour legal battle, the court's conservative majority overturned the lower court's ruling, permitting the execution to proceed with the barbiturate pentobarbital.
Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of Colleen Slemmer. Legal efforts are now underway to have her sentence commuted following the unsuccessful execution.
Final words before the procedure
Around 90 minutes after the Supreme Court ruling, prison staff opened the curtains to the execution chamber, where media witnesses saw Pike strapped to a gurney with an intravenous line in her arm. Before the procedure began, she gave a final statement, saying she was leaving the world with love.
“I’m ready to be free,” she said. The five chilling words were: “This is a happy day.”
Failed lethal injection
Pike spent several moments singing with her spiritual adviser and looking around the chamber before complaining that her arm was hurting or felt as though it was burning, asking whether the sensation was normal. The witness curtain was then closed and later reopened at roughly the point when a second dose of pentobarbital would have been administered.
Although Pike appeared to become unconscious, she continued breathing and was observed making intermittent snoring-like sounds for more than an hour. Prison officials eventually closed the curtain permanently, around 40 minutes after it had first been opened to witnesses.
