Christa Pike alive after two lethal injections as Tennessee execution goes wrong
Hours after the US Supreme Court cleared the way 6-3, witnesses say Christa Pike was still breathing after two syringes of pentobarbital, as her lawyers filed emergency motions alleging 'unnecessary agony'.
Tennessee’s attempt to execute Christa Pike collapsed into chaos on Wednesday night: her lawyers said she was still alive and snoring after two syringes of pentobarbital at Nashville’s Riverbend Maximum Security Institution (The Tennessean).
Hours earlier the US Supreme Court voted 6-3 to vacate a Sixth Circuit stay issued under two hours before Pike’s scheduled 10am execution, before her midnight death-warrant deadline. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, called the ruling “stunning”, writing the court is “a court of review, not of first view” (USA Today).
Media witnesses said Pike repeatedly complained of pain. “My arm feels like it’s about to bust. One spot is really throbbing,” WKRN reporter Tori Gessner heard her say. The blinds to the death chamber were repeatedly opened and closed; witnesses were escorted out at 8.53pm while she could still be heard breathing, as an ambulance arrived at the prison (The Tennessean; WVLT).
Her lawyers filed emergency motions alleging “unnecessary agony” and demanding lifesaving measures, writing that she “has not lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat”. No time of death was announced; officials would not say whether she was alive or dead (USA Today).
Pike, 50, was sentenced to death in 1996 for the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville. Had it succeeded, it would have been Tennessee’s first execution of a woman in more than 200 years. UN special rapporteur Morris Tidball-Binz had called it “a gross violation of human rights” and “a tremendous mistake” (The Times).
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