Christa Pike survived Tennessee’s attempt to execute her by lethal injection Wednesday night, and Gov. Bill Lee responded by ordering an investigation and postponing the only other execution the state had scheduled this year.
Pike, 50, was brought into the execution chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville at 7:27 p.m. Tennessee’s protocol calls for two 50 ml syringes of pentobarbital, a powerful sedative used in lethal injections that is supposed to put the person into a coma and stop their breathing. Pike received both doses. She did not lose consciousness. She did not stop breathing.
Seven minutes after she was brought in, witnesses heard her say her arm felt like it was about to burst open, then ask officials whether it was supposed to happen like that. Journalists who watched described loud snoring, gasps, heavy exhales and complaints about pain, along with Pike kicking her feet so much that she knocked off the sheets covering her. When media witnesses were told to leave around 8:53 p.m., she could still be heard snoring.
An ambulance was later seen leaving the prison. In a court filing, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s office said Christa Pike had been taken to a hospital where she was receiving medical care. The state did not say which hospital or what condition she was in, and her own legal team says they have not been told either.
“Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution,” Pike’s attorneys said in a statement. While the procedure was still underway, they filed emergency motions with the Tennessee Supreme Court and a federal court asking judges to stop the execution and order life saving care, arguing she was in “unnecessary agony.”
The Tennessee Department of Correction released a statement after 11 p.m. saying it “followed every step of the state’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office” and that the drug has consistently been effective.
Shortly before midnight, Lee announced he had ordered an independent review conducted by an outside party.
“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,” Lee said.
He also postponed the execution of Gary Wayne Sutton, which had been set for Dec. 3. Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, called what happened to Pike “singular and unparalleled.
The failed execution capped a day of legal whiplash. About an hour before the execution was set to begin, a three judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2 to 1 to pause it. The court wanted to review whether Pike’s history of childhood sexual abuse and rape was fully considered when she was sentenced. Witnesses and family members who had already gathered at the prison were left waiting.
The state immediately went to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing the delay was traumatizing the victim’s family and rewarding what it called “abusive delay tactics.” That evening, the Supreme Court lifted the pause and allowed the execution to move forward. Justice Sonia Sotomayor objected, writing that “Tennessee’s desire to expedite Pike’s execution by a few days or even weeks cannot outweigh her ‘fundamental interest in (her) own life.'” Lee had already declined to grant Pike clemency.
Christa Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of Colleen Slemmer, 19, a classmate at a Job Corps training center in Knoxville. Pike was 18 at the time and was convicted along with her boyfriend. She has never denied the killing. Her supporters have argued for years that her age, mental illness and a history of severe sexual abuse beginning when she was a toddler should have spared her from a death sentence, pointing out that other Tennessee defendants who were 18 at the time of their crimes have had death sentences thrown out.
Slemmer’s mother and stepfather traveled to Tennessee to witness the execution.
Had it succeeded, Christa Pike would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in at least 200 years. As of Thursday, she is alive, hospitalized, and still under a death sentence, with no word yet on what the state plans to do next.
