Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike hospitalised after botched execution

Christa Pike, 50, survived two lethal injections during her execution at a Nashville prison. Her legal team filed an emergency motion as she remained alive with a heartbeat.

Convicted murderer survives two lethal injections in Tennessee execution attempt

Christa Pike, 50, was rushed to hospital on Wednesday night after her heart continued beating following two doses of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, her lawyer has said. The Sun reports that Pike lost consciousness during the procedure but remained "audibly snoring", prompting her legal team to file an emergency motion mid-execution to halt proceedings and demand medical care.

One of her attorneys told the BBC that Pike was "being provided life-saving measures" at an off-site medical facility after two syringes of pentobarbital had been administered. The curtain in the witness room was closed twice during the attempt, and media were at some point asked to leave, the Associated Press reported.

District Judge Clifton L Corker issued a ruling acknowledging that "medical personnel have begun to administer medical care as requested in the motion."

Legal team points to systemic failures

Pike's lawyers issued a statement to the Tennessean newspaper laying out what they said were foreseeable problems with the execution protocol. "Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution," the statement read. "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."

Dr Joel Zivot, a professor at the Emory University School of Medicine who was retained by Pike's legal team as a medical expert, said she likely never achieved a sufficient blood level of pentobarbital to cause apnoea and cardiovascular failure. "It's very possible that as a consequence of the delay of the beginning of resuscitation she will have a brain injury," Zivot said in an email to the BBC.

The Tennessee Department of Correction defended its conduct. "The Tennessee Department of Correction followed every step of the State's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General's Office," department spokesperson Dorinda Carter told the Tennessean. "The lethal injection chemical in the protocol has consistently been effective, and the protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out this evening."

Supreme Court clears the way twice

The execution went ahead after the US Supreme Court overturned a reprieve granted by a lower court earlier on Wednesday morning — the second time in as many days the justices had authorised proceeding with Pike's death by lethal injection. Earlier the same day, judges from the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit had temporarily paused the execution, saying they needed more time to consider arguments in her case.

Pike's lawyers had argued that the jury did not have the opportunity to weigh mitigating evidence of her documented history of childhood sexual abuse before sentencing her to death in 1996. For years, the state of Tennessee argued in court that she had fabricated the abuse. At a recent hearing concerning her execution method, however, the state said it no longer disputed that she had suffered sexual abuse and rape. Tennessee's governor rejected a clemency request from Pike this week; she is the only woman on the state's death row.

A murder that drew national attention

Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995. The two had met Slemmer at a job training camp for troubled teenagers. Pike had accused Slemmer of insulting her and attempting to steal her boyfriend. Two other residents at the camp later testified that Pike had bragged about the killing and showed them a piece of Slemmer's skull.

The case drew intense media coverage in Knoxville after Slemmer's body was found with an inverted pentagram — a symbol associated with satanic groups — carved into her chest. Pike has denied carving the symbol herself. Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 and has spent nearly three decades on death row.

In her clemency petition, Pike said she had intended to beat Slemmer but not kill her. "I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid," she said in a statement. "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."

Victim's mother had waited decades

Colleen Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, had said she wanted the execution to proceed. A group helped fund travel for Martinez and her husband from Florida to Tennessee to witness the execution. "Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run," Martinez told the Associated Press. "Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst."

Since the US Supreme Court resumed the death penalty in 1976, only 18 women have been executed in the United States, compared to 1,663 men — roughly 1% of all executions carried out in that period.

Source: The Sun