Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike was rushed to hospital after she remained alive following two lethal injections during her execution on Wednesday. Her legal team filed an emergency motion to halt the procedure, reporting that Pike had lost consciousness but still had a heartbeat and was audibly snoring.
Pike, 50, was being administered life-saving measures in hospital after receiving two syringes of pentobarbital, her lawyer told the BBC. The state of Tennessee has yet to comment on the incident.
The execution attempt proceeded after the US Supreme Court overturned a stay granted by a lower court earlier that day. Justice Brett Kavanaugh authorized the lifting of the reprieve without explanation. The court’s three liberal justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—dissented. Sotomayor wrote that allowing the execution to proceed before Pike’s pending legal challenges were resolved would override her fundamental interest in life.
The execution was scheduled at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville and was set to expire at midnight. Following the failed execution, Dr Joel Zivot, a professor at Emory University School of Medicine and expert on physician involvement in lethal injection, said Pike likely never reached a sufficient blood level of pentobarbital to cause respiratory arrest and cardiovascular failure.
“It’s very possible that as a consequence of the delay of the beginning of resuscitation she will have a brain injury,” Zivot said.
Earlier that day, the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit had paused the execution to allow more time to consider Pike’s case. Pike’s lawyers argued the federal courts’ ruling had been influenced by Tennessee’s prior claim that Pike lied about being sexually abused as a child. At a recent hearing on her execution method, however, the state acknowledged sexual abuse and rape had occurred.
This was the second time in two days the US Supreme Court cleared the way for Pike’s execution. On Tuesday, the justices rejected a different appeal from her legal team. The Tennessee governor also denied her clemency request this week.
Pike was convicted in 1996 for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, whom she and her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp met at a job training camp for troubled teens. Pike was 18 at the time, making her the youngest person on Tennessee’s death row. She is currently the only woman on death row in the state.
The murder attracted media attention after Slemmer was found with an inverted pentagram carved into her chest, a symbol associated with satanic groups. Pike denied carving the symbol herself. Prior to the killing, Pike accused Slemmer of insulting her and trying to steal her boyfriend. Other camp residents testified Pike bragged about the murder and showed them a piece of Slemmer’s skull.
In her clemency petition, Pike said she intended only to beat Slemmer, not kill her. “I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid,” she wrote. “It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime.”
Colleen Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, has expressed her desire to see Pike executed. She told the Associated Press she has waited decades for the sentence to be carried out. Martinez and her husband traveled from Florida to Tennessee to witness the execution, funded by a group of supporters. “Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst,” Martinez said.
Since 1976, when the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, only 18 women have been executed nationwide compared to 1,663 men, making women about 1% of all executions.
Pike’s case remains under intense legal scrutiny following the failed execution, with questions about the administration of the lethal injection and ongoing appeals.
According to Joy Online.
