Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike, who survived a failed execution by lethal injection in a US prison last week, is conscious and speaking at a hospital, her lawyers have said. Fifty-year-old Pike was convicted of murdering her classmate in 1995. The Death Penalty Information Center, which publishes data and analysis on capital punishment in the United States, said Pike was the first inmate ever to survive “after being injected with lethal doses of execution drugs”.
Pike’s “unprecedented” survival raises questions about her medical and legal future. Pike is under guard, recovering at a hospital in Nashville where she was rushed after surviving the lethal injection administered by the Tennessee Department of Correction. Her arms were swollen, burned and blistered when she arrived at the hospital on September 30.
They called her recovery “medically unprecedented”. Pike’s prognosis remained “unclear”, they said, adding that, at a minimum, she faced a lengthy recovery. Fifty-year-old Pike was sentenced to death after being convicted of a murder as a teenager.
The case sparked debate over the death penalty for young offenders, as Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend beat, tortured and killed 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer at a job training camp in 1995. Pike’s lawyers sought clemency, citing her age, childhood sexual abuse and mental health problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder. The case had already attracted attention in the run-up to the execution date, as Pike would have been the first woman put to death by the state of Tennessee in more than 200 years. 7:30pm – The attempt to execute Pike got under way on September 30 in the death chamber at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
Pike was given a chance to make a final statement before two doses of the chemical pentobarbital were administered as executioners attempted to put her to death. 7:35pm – Pike raised her head and said her arm was hurting. 8:53pm – Media were escorted out of the witness room. 9:14pm – An ambulance arrived at the prison to take Pike to hospital. Journalists who witnessed the execution said a black curtain was drawn from inside the death chamber during the process to insert the intravenous lines into Pike, in line with state regulations. This is done to conceal the identities of the workers who perform the procedure.
Tennessee’s execution protocol calls for a secondary set of pentobarbital-filled syringes in case the condemned person does not die after the first set. But there are no instructions for how to proceed if the person does not die after a second lethal injection dose. Pike’s lawyers are due in court on Wednesday, where they will be seeking more information from the Tennessee Department of Correction about the botched execution attempt.
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