Christa Pike survives Tennessee lethal injection as judge reopens her case
Christa Pike, 50, survived two doses of pentobarbital at a Nashville prison on 30 September. A Tennessee judge has since ruled her case can be reopened, and Governor Bill Lee has suspended the state's remaining executions this year.
Failed execution in Nashville
Christa Pike, 50, was taken to the execution chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on 30 September, where medical staff placed cannulas in her arm. The state administered a high dose of pentobarbital, and the first dose did not produce the expected result. A second dose followed, and Pike again did not die. A Tennessee appeals court had temporarily halted the execution earlier that day, but the US Supreme Court allowed it to go ahead after the state applied for it. Requests to die by hanging or by firing squad instead of lethal injection were both rejected. Witnesses said they heard Pike complaining of a burning pain in her arm, which she said felt like it was about to burst.
Pike's condition and the court ruling
After nearly a week unconscious and intubated at a Nashville hospital, Pike is awake and talking. Her arms are severely injured and not fully usable, and she remains 'foggy' from the effects of the drug overdose. Reports describe serious physical and cognitive problems, and it is unclear whether she will recover full cognitive function. Judge I'Ashea Myles of the Davidson County Chancery Court in Nashville has ruled that the case will be reopened, finding that Pike had set out 'extreme, unique, exceptional or extraordinary circumstances' that allow her to seek legal remedy in court. Deputy Attorney General William Ayers answered the judge's questions at a Wednesday hearing. Pike's lawyers want her death sentence converted to life imprisonment, and Tennessee has not decided whether it will attempt a second execution.
Lethal injection protocol under challenge
Pike's lawyers had filed suit in January challenging the state's single-drug pentobarbital protocol, and the Tennessee Supreme Court dismissed that suit in May. They argued the protocol involved secrecy, deliberate omissions, a lack of detail, and untrained, unlicensed prison staff attempting to take over the medical role. They also argued that her narrow veins made inserting a needle difficult. The judge found they had not shown a significant risk of pain, serious illness or unnecessary suffering, so the execution went ahead. Tony Carruthers was also taken to the chamber in May and left alive after officials struggled to find a vein.
- Tony Carruthers leaves the death chamber alive after officials struggle to find a vein
- Pike's lethal injection: first dose fails, second dose given, and she survives
- Judge I'Ashea Myles hears the case before ruling it can be reopened
- Pike is awake and talking after nearly a week unconscious and intubated
Deborah W. Denno, a Fordham University School of Law professor who studies capital punishment, told Der Spiegel that the problems are longstanding. Her account is that the manufacturer stopped producing the drug in 2009, that it cannot easily be imported, and that the resulting shortages led to risky procurement.
Many of those involved are poorly trained or careless. That was already the case with the first lethal injection execution, and nothing has changed since.
A separate Pentagon announcement said US President Donald Trump had approved the execution of an attacker by firing squad. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said two days later that the execution would be streamed live.
Who Christa Pike is
Pike was convicted in January 1995, when she was 18, of murdering 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer near Knoxville together with her boyfriend and another person. Her boyfriend was 17 at the time of the killing and received a life sentence. Pike's lawyers say she suffered severe physical and sexual abuse as a child and was raped a year before the killing, and that the jury was not adequately informed of this history. Until the failed attempt, she was the only woman on death row in Tennessee, and she would have been the first woman executed in the state in more than two centuries. In a taped interview weeks before her scheduled execution, Pike described her fear of the drug.
The drug supposedly burns very bad, and so that sounds scary to me because they used the word Draino in speaking about this drug.
Governor Bill Lee suspended all remaining death sentences scheduled for this year and ordered an independent review. Frank Strada, head of the Tennessee Department of Correction, left his post after the failed attempt.
