Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has halted executions until at least the end of the year and ordered an independent investigation after Christa Pike survived two doses of a lethal injection drug during an attempted execution in Nashville.
Pike, 50, remained alive and was reportedly snoring about 40 minutes after receiving the two doses on Wednesday night. She was subsequently transferred to a hospital, where her lawyers said she was in critical condition on Thursday.
“We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment, but we do know that she is alive right now and receiving life-saving medical care,” attorney Randy Spivey told an afternoon press conference.
“She is in critical condition receiving life-saving care. That is the extent of what we have at the moment.”
Lee, a Republican, described the failed execution as “deeply disturbing” and said the state owed the public an explanation.
“This is a tragedy,” he told reporters on Thursday morning. “There is no one that wanted what happened last night to happen. It shouldn’t have happened.”
“It’s the most difficult of circumstances as it relates to the sentence that should have been carried out by the state. It’s a tragedy, and it’s deeply disturbing that that has happened in this state. The people deserve better than that.”
The governor said he had spoken with Tennessee Department of Correction Secretary Frank Strada but had no update on Pike’s condition. He had not yet contacted her family or the family of Colleen Slemmer, the teenager Pike killed in 1995.
Lee announced a “comprehensive, third party review” late on Wednesday, although he told reporters the following morning that he had yet to appoint an investigator, according to the Tennessean.
“There are a lot of questions,” he said. “The people of our state deserve to have those questions answered. I’m highly disappointed, along with Tennesseans, about what happened.”
Pike’s legal team sharply criticised the execution attempt. Spivey, from the office of the post-conviction defender, said officials used seven needles, including one that became bent when it was removed from her arm.
“Last night was not just inefficient, it was cruel and it was torturous. It was also predictable,” he said.
Spivey added that he saw no life-saving treatment administered after officials abandoned the execution at approximately 8:25pm.
The Department of Correction defended its actions, saying staff had complied with the state’s approved procedures.
“The Tennessee Department of Correction followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office,” spokesperson Dorinda Carter said in a statement.
“The lethal injection chemical in the protocol has consistently been effective, and the protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out this evening. Christa Pike has been transported to an off-site medical facility.”
According to the Associated Press, Tennessee’s protocol requires a second set of drug syringes to be administered “if the inmate is not deceased” following the initial dose. It does not specify what officials should do if the prisoner survives the second dose.
After Pike received the second dose of pentobarbital, her lawyers submitted an emergency motion to the Tennessee Supreme Court seeking to stop the execution.
They argued that she was experiencing “unnecessary agony” and that the state was violating her constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
The execution had proceeded after the US Supreme Court lifted a federal court stay late on Wednesday. The earlier ruling had paused proceedings to allow consideration of whether allegations of childhood sexual abuse had been adequately examined during Pike’s 1996 sentencing.
Pike had been due to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries. She was sentenced to death for the January 1995 murder of 19-year-old Slemmer, a fellow student at Knoxville Job Corps.
Pike and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, were 18 and 17 respectively when they and another female friend tortured and killed Slemmer with boxcutters and a rock. The murder attracted national attention because of the perpetrators’ ages and the brutality involved.
Shipp carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest, while Pike later showed a friend a piece of the victim’s skull.
Pike did not deny her involvement and was subsequently diagnosed with mental health disorders. In a clemency petition rejected by Lee and the US Supreme Court, she said: “I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done.”
The suspension also affects Gary Wayne Sutton, the only other prisoner scheduled for execution in Tennessee this year. Sutton, who has been on death row since 1996 for murdering a friend, was due to be executed on December 3.
