Death row inmate Christa Pike was heard asking whether a burning sensation in her arm was “normal” during a botched execution that medical experts say may have caused brain damage.
The convicted killer remained alive and audibly snoring after receiving two doses of pentobarbital at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Wednesday. The incident has been described by experts as the “worst botched execution in the modern era.”
Witnesses in the execution chamber said Pike reported a burning spot in her arm that felt as though it might burst, then asked whether the sensation was normal.
Medical experts are now examining how Pike survived two injections of the lethal drug.
Dr. Joel Zivot, an Emory University School of Medicine professor retained by Pike’s legal team, said the pentobarbital may not have reached her bloodstream in a sufficient concentration to stop her breathing.
“It’s very possible that as a consequence of the delay of the beginning of resuscitation she will have a brain injury,” Zivot told the BBC.
Witnesses said curtains separating Pike from the viewing room closed at 7.46pm and reopened at 7.49pm. During that period, she was reportedly gasping and moaning while kicking at her bedsheet.
“Her mouth fell open a few times, and she began to loudly snore. She gasped a few times,” one witness said.
Pike, pictured in court in 2007, remained “alive and snoring” after both syringes of lethal injection drugs were administered on Wednesday night
Pike was convicted at age 18 in March 1996 of brutally stabbing and beating Knoxville Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer, pictured, to death
Emergency responders were seen arriving at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution after the botched execution
Pike was still awake and snoring more than 40 minutes after the final dose was given at 8.06pm. Witnesses were ordered to leave the prison at approximately 8.53pm.
Journalists who witnessed the procedure said “nothing we saw was normal,” describing the execution as unusually prolonged.
An Associated Press reporter said Pike “appeared noticeably awake as the execution began.” Other witnesses reported that she sang at one point with her spiritual adviser.
After being secured to the execution gurney, Pike was heard saying: “I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life. And that is with love.”
Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, called the incident unprecedented.
“This event is the worst we’ve seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era,” Maher said.
At an August hearing in Knoxville, Pike’s attorneys had argued that her thrombocytosis could increase clotting and pain during the execution.
Her lawyers also warned that Pike’s veins were difficult to access, potentially prolonging the procedure and increasing her suffering.
In a statement issued Wednesday, Pike’s attorneys said: “Tonight, the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution.
“We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms. Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy.”
The crime shocked the city of Knoxville and drew widespread national attention, in part because a pentagram – a star-shaped emblem linked to Satanism – was carved into Slemmer’s chest, and a portion of her skull was taken as a souvenir of the carnage.
‘Christa is being treated at a nearby hospital,’ her lawyers said. ‘We have not been informed as to her condition.’
It was the second time this year that Tennessee has been unable to carry out an execution.
Pike’s attorneys argued at a hearing in Knoxville that her thrombocytosis could increase clotting and pain during the execution process
In May, state officials called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after executioners tried and failed for over an hour to place an IV to administer pentobarbital.
Pike had been scheduled to be executed for the brutal 1995 murder of Slemmer and would have been the first woman executed in the state of Tennessee in more than 200 years.
But the procedure was delayed for hours after the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued an order staying Pike’s execution ‘until further order of this court.’
The US Supreme Court overturned the order just before 6pm local time, clearing the way for Pike’s execution.
Following the botched execution, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee said in a statement that he has ordered a ‘comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred’ and that the remaining scheduled execution will not take place 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 they ‘followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.’
The state’s execution protocol calls for a secondary set of drug syringes to be administered ‘if the inmate is not deceased’ after the first set. It does not spell out what happens if the subject is alive after the second set.
Maher added that what Pike experienced is ‘singular and unparalleled’, noting that seven other people have survived medical problems due to an execution team’s failure to access a vein to administer lethal injection drugs, but no one has stayed alive after receiving the drugs used in such an execution.
Media witnesses said they left the execution chamber with a lot of questions
An ambulance is pictured arriving at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution on Wednesday night
Pike is pictured being escorted from Knox County Criminal Court on March 30, 1996, after being sentenced to death for the murder of Colleen Slemmer
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The mishap was just the latest in a string of events that delayed the enactment of her death sentence, which was originally scheduled for 10am on Wednesday
But it wasn’t until 7.26pm that the curtains into the execution chamber opened and Pike and her spiritual advisor were seen singing a song before the killer made her final remarks, media witnesses have described.
By 7.46pm prison officials closed the curtain to the media room. They then raised the curtain again three minutes later. At that time, Pike could be heard loudly snoring, and the curtain was closed again at 8.06pm.
Pike continued to be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at about 8.53pm. At that time, there was an announcement to escort media witnesses out of the area.
‘We have a lot of questions,’ one reporter said at an ensuing news conference. ‘And the [Tennessee Department of Corrections] has a lot of answers it needs to provide the public.’
Tori Gessner, a reporter at WKRN who has witnessed several executions, also emphasised: ‘Nothing about today was normal, typical, at all.’
Attorney Amy Harwell has since driven an emergency motion to the Tennessee Supreme Court.
‘Ms Pike has not lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat and is audibly snoring,’ the attorneys wrote in the motion filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee.
The botched execution comes just four months after Tony Carruthers’ execution was called off
Another emergency motion was filed with the US Supreme Court, seeking to immediately halt and stay the execution. Lawyers claimed in that filing that Pike was in ‘unnecessary agony,’ and the botched execution constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
The motion further asserted that the Department of Correction should begin lifesaving measures.
‘Failure to provide such care constitutes deliberate indifference to legitimate, serious medical needs,’ her lawyers asserted.
Federal Judge Clifton L. Corker has since declared that ‘medical personnel have begun to administer medical care as requested in the motion.’
Pike’s attorneys had previously asked for an all-female firing squad to kill her or to be hanged, the New York Post reported.
Having Pike be restrained and handled by men could retraumatize her because of past sexual abuse, her lawyers had claimed, noting that she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.
‘[Lethal injection administered by men] will increase the likelihood that an Eighth Amendment violation will occur,’ Ferrell said.
‘There is an increased risk of pain and suffering.’
According to the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, Pike was a victim of child sexual abuse, multiple rapes and attempted suicide at age 12.
Pike (left) was tried in March 1996. The jury swiftly convicted her and sentenced her to death
Pike was assisted by her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp (left), and their classmate Shadolla Peterson (right)
When she was 17, she was allegedly grabbed by a stranger by the side of the road and raped. Police never arrested a suspect.
She killed Colleen Slemmer almost one year to the day after the alleged rape.
She was convicted at the age of 18 in March 1996 for brutally stabbing and beating Knoxville Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer to death.
Her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and an accomplice, Shadolla Peterson, also helped lure Slemmer to a wooded area before the couple tortured her to death.
The pair carved a pentagram into the teen’s chest, and Peterson testified that she saw Pike also carve something into Slemmer’s head, police evidence showed.
Pike also took a piece of her skull as a souvenir, according to investigators.
Slemmer attempted to run for her life, but the couple captured her again and continued the gruesome torture that lasted about 30 minutes to an hour, Pike estimated.
Pike and Shipp were both found guilty of first-degree murder. She was sentenced to death, and he received a life sentence with the possibility of parole.
Pike was scheduled to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years. She is pictured attending a virtual court hearing in August
Peterson, then 18, served as a lookout for the couple during the deadly attack and was granted probation in exchange for her cooperation.
Pike has not denied her guilt, but her attorneys and supporters argued that a death sentence is not appropriate for a crime committed at that age by a teenager with untreated mental illness after a childhood of brutal sexual abuse and neglect.
In a clemency petition, the lawyers argued that Pike’s untreated mental illness and background made her unable to ‘put the brakes on.’ She had told police that she initially only wanted to fight Slemmer but ended up killing her in the frenzied attack.
‘I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. 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,’ Pike said in a statement included in her clemency petition.
Assistant federal defender Stephen Ferrell further argued that more is known today about adolescent brain development and that Pike’s death sentence is an outlier.
Still, Governor Lee said he decided not to intervene in the case ‘after deliberate consideration of Christa Gail Pike’s request for clemency and after a thorough review of the case.’
Following the ruling, Pike refused to select a last meal, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction.
Inmates are typically given $20 to spend on their last meal, according to The Tennessean. The state still planned to provide Pike with a meal before the procedure.