Christa Pike still alive after two lethal injection doses, lawyers say

Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, was still alive after prison staff gave Pike two doses of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital, Pike’s lawyers said.

Pike’s execution had been due at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. The 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals had voted to pause it hours earlier, by two votes to one, so judges could consider whether claims that Pike suffered childhood sexual abuse had been fully weighed at sentencing.

The US Supreme Court lifted that stay later the same day at Tennessee’s request, clearing the way for the Tennessee Department of Correction to resume the execution.

Media witnesses said Pike received both syringes of pentobarbital and remained awake and snoring more than 40 minutes after the last dose, according to an emergency motion filed by Pike’s lawyers.

The motion said Pike had not lost consciousness and still had a heartbeat, and was heard complaining of pain and kicking Pike’s feet so often that the sheets covering Pike fell to the floor.

“Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution,” Pike’s legal team said in a statement. “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.”

Pike’s lawyers filed the emergency motion seeking an immediate stay of the execution and demanding the Tennessee Department of Correction begin lifesaving measures.

The Tennessee Department of Correction made no official statement on the failed attempt, and Pike’s condition afterwards was not disclosed.

Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow worker at a Knoxville Job Corps Center, in a killing prosecutors said was driven by jealousy.

What happened before: the execution would have been the state’s first of a woman in at least 200 years, had it been completed as planned after the Supreme Court’s order.