Christa Pike, a Tennessee death row prisoner, is conscious and able to speak after surviving an execution attempt in which she was injected twice with pentobarbital on 30 September, her lawyers said in a Tuesday statement reported by the BBC.
Awake, restrained, and under critical care
Pike, 50, remains in hospital receiving critical care and is “handcuffed and shackled to the bed,” according to her attorneys. An anaesthesiologist advising her legal team, Dr Joel Zivot, told the BBC she has been taken off a ventilator and can communicate in a basic way. Zivot said Pike recalls being in the hospital but appears to have no memory of the execution attempt; she could state her name but misjudged the date, believing it was still September.
What experts say about an outcome they call unprecedented
Pike’s lawyers and outside experts told the BBC her apparent recovery is unprecedented; she is believed by them to be the only person to survive a lethal injection after some toxin entered the body. Deborah Denno, a criminologist and law professor at Fordham University, said she was “absolutely astonished” that Pike is conscious and speaking. Denno noted there have been seven prior instances of prisoners surviving executions, but in those cases no drugs entered the veins. “They did everything they were supposed to do as part of the execution process, and it simply didn’t work,” she told the BBC. “This has never happened before.”
How the attempt may have failed
Authorities have not said whether they will try again to execute Pike and have offered no explanation for what went wrong after twice injecting pentobarbital. Zivot told the BBC the drug may have dispersed into tissue under the skin instead of entering the bloodstream in a lethal amount. He cautioned that the risks are not over and said most people who receive lethal injection die from it.
Witness questions—and the victim’s family
Steven Hale of the Nashville Banner, who witnessed the attempt, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he knew of no exact precedent and said the case raises many questions, including how the victim’s family experiences a process that, for 30 years, framed “justice” as executing Pike. Immediately after the attempt, the victim’s mother called it a “mess,” according to the BBC.
State response and what’s next
While the incident is under investigation, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has suspended all executions for the rest of the year, and the state’s prisons chief is resigning, the BBC reported. Pike’s lawyers are due in a Nashville court on Wednesday and plan a news conference outside the courthouse. They have renewed their call for the governor to commute her sentence to life without parole.
Case background
Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured, and killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995 after meeting her at a job-training program for troubled teens, according to the BBC. Shipp was 17 and not eligible for the death penalty; he remains in prison.
Botched executions in context
The Death Penalty Information Center says more than a third of US executions in 2022 were botched or highly problematic. In lethal injection cases it has tracked, documented failures occurred before drugs were administered, often due to difficulty establishing IV access. Earlier this year in Tennessee, the execution of Tony Carruthers was postponed when staff could not find a vein; the governor granted him a one-year reprieve, according to the BBC.
