Death row inmate Christa Pike asked prison officials a chilling three-word question after receiving a lethal injection and not dying: "Is that normal?" During her execution, Pike was awake and described a burning spot in her arm that felt like it was going to burst. She is said to have raised her head and asked the question, according to witnesses.
Botched Execution and Emergency Motion
Her lawyer said officials were forced to rush her to the hospital following the failed execution attempt in an unprecedented case. The legal team for the inmate filed an emergency motion to halt the execution on Wednesday, arguing she was in "unnecessary agony" and it was violating her right to be executed free of cruel and unusual punishment.
One of her attorneys told the media Pike, 50, was being given "life-saving measures" after being given two doses of pentobarbital. Her current condition is not known at this time.
Supreme Court Ruling and Governor's Action
Pike's legal team had filed for a last-minute delay to her execution, though this was later overturned and the execution was permitted to proceed later that day by the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court's three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented from the ruling, with Ms Sotomayor writing that it clears the way for the execution to happen "before her still-pending legal challenges to her conviction can be properly considered."
In an update, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has now paused all executions in the state and ordered a review into Pike's unprecedented botched execution.
Witness Accounts and Last Words
Pike's execution proceeding went ahead on Wednesday evening, with witnesses observing from a separate room, noting officials raised curtains at 7.27pm, showing Pike strapped to a gurney. In her last words, Pike described herself as at peace, saying: "I'm going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is in love."
According to witnesses in the execution chamber, the curtains separating Pike from the viewing area were closed at 7.46pm, but opened again just three minutes later at 7.49pm. Witnesses described Pike gasping and moaning as she kicked her bedsheet. One said: "Her mouth fell open a few times, and she began to loudly snore. She gasped a few times."
By 8.26pm, execution witnesses reported that the second dose of pentobarbital had been administered. Pike continued to be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at 8.53pm. At that time, there was an announcement to escort media witnesses out of the area.
Tori Gressner, anchor for local station WKRN, told a conference: "When the curtains were opened she was kind of inconsistently going in and out of snores and silence. When the curtains closed the final at 8.05pm we could consistently hear her snoring, and then it developed into a snore and squeak. Then even at 8.53pm, when the microphone was cut off, we could still hear snoring."
Pike was later rushed to a nearby hospital. Her legal team said following the botched attempt: "Ms Pike has lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat and is audibly snoring." Catherine Sweeney, a reporter for local outlet WPLN, said at a conference: "They went through two rounds and she was still breathing at the end, it was very ragged. She lifted her head up and was looking around at one point. She said that there was a spot that was burning and hurting and asked if it was normal. None of it was normal."
Background and Aftermath
The Tennessee Department of Corrections said in a statement that they "followed every step of the State's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General's Office." Pike's legal team said: "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 is one of several US states that maintains secrecy laws that allow officials to withhold information about the lethal injection process. A review has been ordered into the execution.
Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend at the time brutally murdered 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville in 1995. She was convicted the following year and became one of the youngest people on death row in the US. Colleen's body was found with a pentagram carved onto her chest and with her head caved in by a piece of asphalt, with the pentagram attracting widespread attention due to fears of Satan worship during the "satanic panic" of the 1980s and 1990s.
Prosecutors for the case said Pike, fearing Colleen was trying to steal her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, had lured Colleen to a wooded area in January 1995. Shipp admitted he was the one who carved a pentagram into her body. He was 17 when the crime took place and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Pike has been on death row for decades for the killing of Colleen, with her legal team arguing she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her petition for clemency, she said she only wanted to fight Colleen but killed her in a frenzied attack when she couldn't "put the brakes on."
In a statement, Pike previously said: "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."
Colleen's mother said over the weekend that she has waited decades to see Pike's sentence carried out. She said ahead of the execution attempt: "Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run." She previously said: "Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst."
Pike's attempted execution took place at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville just before 8pm local time on Wednesday. She had been scheduled for execution at 10am local time; however, an appeals court stopped the lethal injection just an hour before it was due to start. Witnesses had gathered at the institute already when the 6th Circuit US Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay. The court said a delay in the execution was needed to consider whether Pike's allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered at her sentencing.
The attorney general's office appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that halting the execution at the last moment traumatised Colleen's family and rewarded "abusive delay tactics" by Pike's attorneys. Later in the day, the high court cleared the way for the execution to proceed. The conservative majority did not explain their order, while the three liberal members signed a dissent that said Pike's claims deserved a closer look.
