Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike has been taken to hospital still alive after receiving two lethal injections, prompting questions about how this is possible. Her lawyers said she "has lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat and is audibly snoring," despite the double dose.
One of Pike's attorneys told the BBC that she was "being provided life-saving measures" after receiving the two injections. A death penalty expert called it an unprecedented failure, though similar incidents have occurred six times before.
Previous botched executions
According to Reprieve, in the modern era of executions, there have been six lethal injection executions that had to be abandoned because the process did not work, and those individuals survived. Their names are Romell Broom, Alva Campbell, Doyle Hamm, Alan Miller, Kenneth Smith and Thomas Creech.
There was one additional individual – Clayton Lockett – whose execution was halted due to complications, but he died after 45 minutes in the execution chamber due to a massive heart attack.
Why executions fail
Although the specific details of what happened to Christa are, as yet, unknown, experts have previously ruled on potential reasons why this could happen and how someone could survive. However, surviving two doses is a first, even if protocol dictates that should the first one fail, you give another.
Death Penalty Info, using data from Corinna Lain's Secrets of the Killing State book published last year, states: "Botched executions occur when there is a breakdown in, or departure from, the 'protocol' for a particular method of execution."
Dosage errors and delays
As for the actual reason as to how it happens, pretty much every expert is in agreement – it comes from "being administered the wrong dosages of specific drugs for lethal injections."
Reprieve claims: "It was claimed that lethal injections would take around five minutes, with people painlessly falling asleep and dying less than two minutes after the final injection. Instead, botched executions are often lengthy and painful. More than a quarter lasted over an hour. The longest lethal injection, in 2022, took over three hours."
In truth, nobody really knows how it's possible for a person to survive two lethal injections, but there are signs from experts that just a tiny mistake somewhere along the line could lead to frequent failures – as has been shown throughout history.
