What to know about Christa Gail Pike’s failed lethal injection attempt
NASHVILLE, Tenn. —
Christa Pike remained alive and in critical condition Thursday, her lawyers said, a day after she survived a failed attempt to execute her for the 1995 murder in what Tennessee’s governor called a “deeply disturbing” procedure.
Video above: Media witnesses recall what happened during Christa Pike’s failed execution
Lawyer Randy Spivey said Pike was reportedly receiving “lifesaving care” at the hospital where she was taken after Wednesday night’s failed execution, but that he and the rest of her legal team didn’t know her condition.
“Christa is alive right now. We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment,” Spivey said during a news conference. “But we know she is alive right now and receiving live-saving medical care.”
The failed execution amounted to “torture,” her lawyers said, and they called for her death sentence to be commuted.
The state tried to execute her by lethal injection on Wednesday, but neither the initial nor backup dose of pentobarbital killed her and she was still snoring when the execution chamber’s microphone was cut off more than an hour into the attempt. She was later taken to a hospital for treatment.
She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
Video below: ‘Hear her snoring’: WKRN journalist Tori Gessner describes Christa Pike’s lethal injection
What happened?
Pike, 50, had been scheduled for execution at 10 a.m. Wednesday for the killing she committed at age 18. An appeals court stopped the lethal injection just an hour before it was to start, and hours later, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that stay.
Officials gave Pike two doses of pentobarbital during Wednesday night’s execution attempt. At one point, she asked prison officials if her arm was supposed to feel that way, though it’s unclear if it was after the first dose entered her body, as officials don’t share that information. Later, more than an hour after the process began and nearly 30 minutes after a backup dose of pentobarbital was administered, she could be heard snoring loudly.
Pike was taken by ambulance from the prison to a hospital.
What are officials saying?
A death penalty expert said it was an unprecedented failure.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said in a statement that he has ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred” and that the remaining scheduled execution will not take place this year.
“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 state’s execution protocol calls for a secondary set of drug syringes to be administered “if the inmate is not deceased” after the first set. It does not spell out what happens if the subject is alive after the second set.
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 problems due to an execution team’s failure to access a vein to administer lethal injection drugs, but no one has stayed alive after receiving the drugs used in such executions, she said.
Video below: Roane County News journalist Damon Lawrence reads Christa Pike’s last words
Media witnesses detail the execution process
Media witnesses observing from a separate room said officials raised curtains to the execution chamber at 7:27 p.m., showing 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 “last” words. She described herself as at peace.
But Pike remained awake and at one point raised her head and asked prison officials if her arm was supposed to feel that way. It was not clear what she was referencing.
By 8:26 p.m., 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 8:53 p.m. At that time, there was an announcement to escort media witnesses out of the area.
What was Christa Gail Pike convicted of?
Pike, 50, and her boyfriend were convicted of the fatal stabbing and beating in 1995 of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville.
The case garnered widespread attention in part because of a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer’s body, and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.
After the killing, 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 “put the brakes on.”
“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done,” Pike said in a statement.
Pike did not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argued that the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse.
