Christa Pike, who was sentenced to death in 1995 for murdering her classmate, is receiving “life-saving medical care” after surviving two doses of a lethal injection on Wednesday in a botched execution.
Pike, 50, “is alive right now,” one of her lawyers, Randy Spivey, said during a Press conference Thursday afternoon.
“Right now we don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health,” he added, calling the bungled attempt “cruel,” “inefficient” and “torturous.”
“Christa has endured punishment greater than any other person in the history of the American death penalty,” Spivey argued, accusing the state of Tennessee of being incapable of carrying out an execution “consistent with basic human dignity.”
The update comes less than a day after it was reported that the execution had failed after Pike was administered two doses of pentobarbital and could be heard making snoring sounds by witnesses to the procedure.
After receiving the drugs, she was taken by ambulance to a hospital from the prison, her lawyers said, the Associated Press reported.
Pike was scheduled for execution at 10 a.m. Wednesday morning for a killing she committed at 18 and would have been the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in 200 years.
A Tennessee appeals court initially halted the lethal injection an hour before it was to start; later in the day, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that stay, permitting the execution to go ahead.
Lawyers for Pike in an emergency motion to halt and stay the execution late Wednesday, ordered immediate medical care for the death row inmate and noted that curtains in the observation gallery went down twice, that she did not lose consciousness and had a perceptible heartbeat.
In a statement to the Associated Press, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee said he ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred” and that a remaining state execution scheduled for this year will not take place.
Get daily National news
“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.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said in a statement that it “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office,’ the AP added.
During executions, the state’s protocol calls for a second dose to be administered “if the inmate is not deceased” after the first and a mandatory five-minute waiting period. It does not provide guidelines on what happens if the inmate survives a secondary dose.
Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said what Pike experienced is “singular and unparalleled.”
Seven other people have survived medical complications due to an execution failure or the team’s inability to access a vein to administer the drugs. No one has stayed alive after receiving the drugs used in such executions, Maher added.
While Pike’s circumstances are unprecedented, bungled executions have occurred recently in other states, including the execution of a man who suffered a prolonged death after choosing to be killed by firing squad over concerns that the lethal injection could cause complications.
Mikal Mahdi, a South Carolina death row inmate, died, but only after death row shooters missed their target.
His lawyer said he opted for the firing squad method because he was concerned about the use of lethal injections, as post-mortem results indicated the use of higher-than-normal dosage amounts and medical complications in previously executed inmates.
On Jan. 31, 2025, South Carolina inmate Mario Bowman was administered double the typical lethal injection dose. Most states use five grams of a combination of chemicals, but Bowman was given 10 grams of pentobarbital.
His autopsy revealed that he suffered from pulmonary edema, a collection of blood and fluid in the lungs.
Spivey and another lawyer for Pike, Kelly Gleason, said in a statement Wednesday night that “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.”
Reporters observing Pike’s execution attempt from a separate room told the AP that prison officials raised curtains to the execution chamber at 7:27 p.m., where they saw 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 final statement.
According to the AP, witnesses reported that she remained conscious and at one point raised her head and asked prison officials if her arm was supposed to feel that way.
Witnesses said a second dose was administered at 8:26 p.m., but that laboured breathing and snoring sounds could be heard coming from Pike behind a closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at 8:53 p.m., at which point media and witnesses were escorted out of the room.
Tennessee has not executed a woman since 1820. Since 1976, 18 women have been put to death in the U.S., equating to about one per cent of all executions, according to the centre.
— with files from the Associated Press
Comments
Comments closed.
Due to the sensitive and/or legal subject matter of some of the content on globalnews.ca, we reserve the ability to disable comments from time to time.
Please see our Commenting Policy for more.