Christa Pike survives failed Tennessee execution as 911 calls show rescue delay

The failed execution

Christa Pike, 50, received two doses of pentobarbital on 30 September at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee, where she was held under a death sentence for a 1995 murder she committed with her then-boyfriend. According to the reporting, the first dose was meant to kill her but did not, and a second injection was then given while she was strapped to the execution table. She survived, and she is believed to be the only person to have survived a lethal injection execution attempt. The Associated Press obtained recordings of the emergency calls through a public records request, and the material was released on Monday, 12 October. The Tennessee Department of Correction has not said which errors were recorded during the attempt.

The emergency calls

The first 911 call was logged at 20:40 on 30 September, a little over an hour after the injections began, and came from inside Riverbend. The caller said the woman was unconscious and not breathing normally, but could not give the code needed to verify the request, so dispatchers came to treat it as a false call. Under state law the first call was released only as a written transcript, while the Nashville Emergency Communications Department published other recordings with some fragments removed. At 21:03 a dispatcher relayed that superiors considered the call false and that no medical help was needed. Prison central control told dispatch that it would have been the agency to call, but that it had not made the call.

Rescue held up by verification

Around 21:07 a rescuer reported over the radio that a state official at the prison gate was saying the call was real and demanding that they go in. At 21:08 Kelly Gleason, one of Pike's lawyers, called 911 to ask rescuers to intervene, saying her client was unconscious, breathing with difficulty and still alive. Paramedics could not enter the prison without a state trooper present, so a dispatcher asked the Tennessee Highway Patrol at about 21:11 to send one. Prison officials confirmed the request was genuine at about the same time, and an AP reporter saw an ambulance and several fire vehicles reach the prison building at 21:14. The sources describe the delay as about half an hour.

Pike's condition and the protocol

At 21:34, as paramedics were taking Pike to hospital, one of them asked dispatch to make sure prison staff knew where she was being taken, citing the confusion. Pike spent about ten days in hospital, where she was intubated for days and handcuffed to the bed, with her arms burned and blistered from the needles. After her discharge she was returned to her cell at Riverbend, and it is unclear how she is being treated now. Her lawyers said the pentobarbital probably went under the skin rather than into her bloodstream, and warned that she faces a long road to recovery. Focus reports that Tennessee's lethal injection protocol is being examined again after the failed attempt.