Tennessee Execution Fails After Injecting Woman With 2 Doses Of Lethal Drug

In your bizarre story for the day, Tennessee officials failed to execute Christa Pike after injecting her twice with a lethal drug. 

AP reports that Pike was set to be executed for her role in the torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995. Pike was injected with a dose of pentobarbital, a lethal drug that usually kills with one dose. Pike was still alive after the first dose and asked if it was normal that her arm “felt like it’s about to burst open.”

Officials say Pike was alive and audibly snoring when they took her to the hospital. There’s been no update on what her condition is since being taken to the hospital. May Martinez, Slemmer’s mother, told NBC News in a phone interview that the execution “was a mess.” 

Martinez isn’t wrong, as there was drama throughout the day leading up to Pike’s attempted execution. 

From AP: 

Pike was initially scheduled to be put to death in the morning, and witnesses had gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay. That court said a delay was needed to consider whether Pike’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered at her sentencing.

The attorney general’s office appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that halting the execution at the last moment traumatized Slemmer’s family and rewarded “abusive delay tactics” by Pike’s attorneys.

Later in the day, the high court cleared the way for the execution to proceed. The conservative majority did not explain their order, while the three liberal members signed a dissent that said Pike’s claims deserved a closer look.

Pike did not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argued that the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse.

In a statement released on Thursday, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said that he ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred” and halted the remaining executions scheduled for this year. 

“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,” he said.

The Tennessee Department of Correction said in a statement that it “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.” The state’s execution rules call for a second dose if the first fails, but they provide no guidelines for what to do if a second dose also fails. 

This is the second execution to have failed in Tennessee this year. The state called off the execution of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after executioners spent over an hour failing to place an IV to administer pentobarbital. 

Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told AP that what Pike experienced is “singular and unparalleled.” Maher said that while executions have failed, like for the reasons in Carruthers’ case, no one has ever stayed alive after actually being injected with the drugs. 

Usually I got something smart to say in these stories, but y’all. What? Like, either this woman is fueled by an indomitable will to live or the executioners are just bad at their jobs. Considering this is the second failed execution this year, I’m leaning toward the latter. 

SEE ALSO:

Federal Judge Lifts Oakland Police Department’s Consent Decree

Trump Immigration Court Deporting Unaccompanied Children As Young As 2