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Tennessee officials have yet to explain what went wrong during the botched execution of Christa Pike, which was suspended after she was administered two doses of the drug intended to kill her.
It was unclear if Pike was still alive on Thursday. She could be heard snoring loudly in the execution chamber on Wednesday night, more than an hour after the execution process began and nearly 30 minutes after a second dose of pentobarbital was administered.
CHRISTA PIKE, FOR WHAT CRIME WAS SHE SENTENCED TO DEATH?
Pike, sentenced to death for a gruesome 1995 murder, was taken by ambulance from the prison to a hospital where she was receiving treatment, according to her lawyers.
May Martinez, whose daughter was murdered by Pike and Pike's boyfriend and who traveled to Nashville to witness the sentence being carried out, told NBC News that “it was a disaster.”
The failure, which a death penalty expert described as unprecedented, led Governor Bill Lee to postpone the only other scheduled execution in Tennessee this year and to order a review “to determine exactly what happened.” It also raises questions again about the state's procedures and its use of single-drug lethal injections.
“There are very few answers this morning. It is very early. There are a lot of questions,” Lee told reporters on Thursday at an unrelated event, noting that he had not received updates on Pike's condition. “The people of our state deserve to have those questions answered.”
“This is a tragedy. There is no one who wanted what happened last night to occur,” the governor added. “I find it deeply disturbing that this has happened in this state.”
Pike, 50, was scheduled for execution on Wednesday morning for the murder she committed at 18 and would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in over 200 years. An appeals court halted the execution an hour before it was set to begin, but the U.S. Supreme Court vacated that stay hours later.
Authorities administered two doses of pentobarbital to Pike, her lawyers stated in court documents filed late Wednesday.
The Tennessee Department of Correction stated in a press release that it “followed every step of the state's legal and established execution protocol, approved by the Attorney General's Office.”
Tennessee changed its execution method two years ago
The state's execution protocol dictates that a second set of syringes with the drug be administered “if the inmate has not expired” after the first set. It does not specify what happens if the person remains alive after the second set.
Tennessee announced in 2024 that it was moving from a three-drug series for lethal injections to the use of the single drug pentobarbital. That came more than two years after the state abruptly suspended the execution of Oscar Smith, acknowledging that it had not ensured its lethal injection drugs were properly tested.
Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, stated that what Pike experienced is “unique and without parallel.”
Seven other people have survived medical issues because execution teams failed to access a vein to administer lethal injection drugs, but no one had remained alive after receiving the drugs used in those executions, she clarified.
Executions in the United States have fallen sharply since the turn of the century as public opposition has grown, along with concerns over costs and the drugs used in lethal injections. But the number of executions nearly doubled last year, driven by a record surge in Florida.
Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the United States this year.
Pike was awake in the execution chamber
Strapped to a gurney in the execution chamber, Pike described herself as being at peace.
“I’m going to leave this world the same way I spent most of my life, and that is in love,” she said in her “final” words.
But she remained awake, and at one point, she lifted her head and asked prison officials if her arm was supposed to feel that way. An hour after authorities first raised the execution chamber curtains, witnesses reported a second dose of pentobarbital was administered.
Pike could still be heard snoring behind a closed curtain until the microphone was cut nearly 30 minutes later.
Pike's lawyers filed an emergency motion late Wednesday with the Tennessee Supreme Court to immediately halt and stay the execution, claiming she was in “needless agony” and that the procedure violated her right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. They also filed motions in two other courts.
It was the second time this year that Tennessee has been unable to complete an execution: state authorities suspended the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, in May after executioners tried and failed for over an hour to establish an IV line to administer pentobarbital.
Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of the 1995 fatal stabbing and beating of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a job training center in Knoxville. The murder drew attention because a pentagram was carved into Slemmer’s body, fueling fears about satanic cults during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.
Pike's boyfriend was not eligible for the death penalty because he was 17 at the time of the murder and received a life sentence. He was denied parole last year.
Pike case reignites death penalty debate
Pike did not deny committing the murder, but her supporters argued that the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness, and her claims of severe sexual abuse.
Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds in Tennessee have had such sentences overturned.
Following the murder, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she said she only wanted to fight Slemmer, but killed her in a frenzied attack when she couldn’t “stop.”
“It took me many years to even realize the gravity of what I had done,” Pike said in a statement.
[Publicidad]