Eyewitness describes Christa Pike botched execution in Tennessee death chamber

A media witness to Christa Pike's failed lethal injection has described the moment he knew it was going wrong. The 50-year-old killer survived two doses of pentobarbital at Riverbend prison in Nashville.

Media witness recounts botched execution of Tennessee death row killer

Will Puckett, an Emmy Award-winning anchor and journalist at WVLT News in Knoxville, Tennessee, was one of only seven media witnesses present when Christa Pike's execution unravelled inside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. The Sun reports that Pike — convicted of the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer — writhed on the gurney, snored deeply, and remained alive after receiving two rounds of lethal drugs.

Puckett described the experience as "surreal" and said he was left "at a loss for words" after his first time witnessing an execution stretched into a working day approaching 22 hours.

Nearly an hour before the curtain opened

Puckett and the other witnesses entered the viewing area at 6.41 pm. According to his notes, the curtain did not open until 7.27 pm — far beyond the "10 minutes max" he had been told to expect. During that wait, an experienced colleague sitting beside him issued a stark warning.

"As we're sitting in this room, and it's now taking nearly an hour for them to open the curtain from the time that we're sat, one of my colleagues in there, who had seen her fair share of executions, leaned over and said, 'It should not be taking this long for the curtains to open. Something's going wrong,'" Puckett told The Sun.

He had expected the Tennessee Department of Correction to announce the procedure would be halted. Instead, the curtains opened.

Two lethal doses and Pike remained alive

Once the curtain opened, Pike delivered a final statement. She said she was "gonna go out with love," that it was a "happy day" and that she was "ready to go."

"It should have been 20 minutes from that moment to the state of Tennessee announcing Christa Pike's time of death," Puckett said.

Instead, the attempt continued without success until 8.53 pm. Pike received two doses of pentobarbital during the procedure. "The first round should be enough to kill a fully grown human," Puckett said. "Everybody tells me one shot should have been enough, let alone two lethal doses of it. That should have been more than enough."

Rather than losing consciousness quietly, Pike began snoring deeply while still strapped to the gurney. "It is the snoring that you can imagine — almost like you would see in a movie of an older person sleeping," Puckett said. "That deep draw of somebody in the deepest depths of sleep was that snore sound. It was rhythmic. It sounded maybe labored at points."

Her body lifted off the gurney and settled back down. Her legs and feet moved back and forth in a motion Puckett compared to a "swimming stroke," though he stressed it did not appear to be a reaction to pain. Pike also complained that a vein in her arm felt like it was "going to bust" and asked whether a burning sensation she was experiencing was normal.

"At no point did she scream," Puckett said. "A couple of times did it look like it was going to be her final breath. It was just — this is obviously going wrong."

Curtain closed, witnesses left without answers

The curtain was first closed at 7.46 pm, reopened at 7.49 pm, then shut again at 8.05 pm, according to Puckett's notes. "That was exceptionally rare," he said.

With the curtain drawn, witnesses could still hear what was happening but could no longer see it. Puckett said that undermined the very purpose of their presence. "The point of us being in there, or for observers, is to say, 'Yep, the state did what it's supposed to,' but because they pulled the curtain, we cannot say that."

The group repeatedly sought information from the Tennessee Department of Correction's communications director. The responses offered little. "The communications director was like, 'I don't know anything. I can't get you an answer. You're seeing and hearing what I'm seeing and hearing,'" Puckett recalled.

Background: the 1995 murder and the long wait for justice

Pike had been set to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. She was convicted of the brutal killing of Colleen Slemmer, then 19, in 1995. Pike, who was 18 at the time, believed Slemmer was attempting to steal her 17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp. Together with Shadolla Peterson, the pair lured Slemmer away from their Knoxville Job Corps centre to an isolated location.

Slemmer was subjected to a prolonged attack in which Pike and Shipp beat and cut her. Shipp carved a pentagram into her chest; Pike smashed her head with a chunk of asphalt before taking a piece of her skull as a trophy. Pike was sentenced to death. Shipp received a life sentence and Peterson was given probation after pleading guilty to being an accessory after the fact.

Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, travelled approximately 600 miles from Florida with her husband Raul to witness the execution after more than 31 years waiting for justice.

Pike hospitalised; transparency questions raised

Pike was ultimately removed from the prison and transferred to an off-site medical facility, where she remained critically ill. She was not believed to be in a coma.

Puckett said he is not surprised by the public reaction to what happened. "I think if you're a taxpayer and somebody who says the state should be transparent, I think you are justifiably feeling angry today," he said.

Members of the media were, at several points during the procedure, left without information about what was taking place behind the curtains — a situation Puckett described as contrary to the stated purpose of having independent observers present at all.

Source: The Sun