Christa Pike’s lawyers spent months warning Tennessee that lethal injection could go wrong for her because of a blood clotting disorder, and they asked the state to hang her instead. On Wednesday night, Pike survived two doses of the execution drug.
Pike, 50, is the only woman on Tennessee’s death row. She was sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and murder of Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a Knoxville Job Corps program, when Pike was 18. Investigators said Pike and her then boyfriend carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest and that Pike kept a piece of her skull.
In a lawsuit challenging the state’s execution protocol, Pike’s attorneys said she has thrombocytopenia and thrombocytosis, a condition that affects how her blood clots. They also said she has small veins that make it hard to insert a needle. They argued that the drug Tennessee uses, pentobarbital, could cause a severe buildup of bloody froth in her lungs. The suit called it “death by drowning in one’s own blood.”
When a prisoner challenges how the state plans to execute them, the law requires them to propose another method. Christa Pike’s team proposed hanging. At an August hearing, prison officials testified that hanging is not an authorized method under Tennessee law. The court’s special master ruled that her lawyers had not proven hanging or any of their other proposals would be safer, and that they had not shown she faced a substantial risk of needless suffering. Her attorneys also asked for an all female execution team, citing her history of sexual abuse by men and her PTSD.
The execution was set for Wednesday. An appeals court paused it about an hour before it was scheduled to start, to consider whether her childhood sexual abuse was fully weighed at her sentencing. The U.S. Supreme Court lifted that pause later in the day.
Media witnesses said the curtains to the execution chamber opened at 7:27 p.m., with Pike strapped to a gurney. By 8:26 p.m., witnesses reported that a second dose of pentobarbital had been given. Her attorneys said she was still alive and snoring loudly, and she was taken by ambulance to a hospital.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said it followed every step of its execution protocol. It said the drug has consistently been effective and that the protocol does not allow anything beyond what was done that night. Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, called the outcome unprecedented. Other people have survived failed attempts to find a vein, she said, but no one has stayed alive after actually receiving the execution drugs.
Governor Bill Lee ordered a comprehensive third party review of what happened and called off the state’s one remaining execution for this year. “Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution,” Pike’s attorneys said.
