Tennessee Authorities Botch Their Attempt to Murder Christa Pike with Lethal Injection: 2nd Botched "Execution" in 5 Months

From [HERE] Christa Pike is in the hospital this morning after surviving the State of Tennessee’s botched attempt to execute her by lethal injection last night.

Her attorneys, who have not been informed about her condition, said in a statement early this morning that “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.”

Ms. Pike, 50, was scheduled to be executed at 10 am yesterday for a murder in 1995, when she was 18 years old.

That morning, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ordered the execution stayed until further order of the court. The State appealed directly to the Supreme Court, which vacated the stay shortly before 6 pm local time.

Three hours later, a lawyer for Ms. Pike reported that she was still alive and breathing after members of the execution team administered two syringes of pentobarbital. Shortly after 9 pm, media witnesses were required to leave the prison and saw an ambulance and other first responders pull up outside.

At a news conference, media witnesses described hearing Ms. Pike complaining about pain and snoring, and saw her kicking her feet so often that she knocked off the sheets that covered her, according to NBC News.

Journalists said that they entered the witness room at 6:41 pm and the blinds opened at 7:26 pm. They reported hearing Ms. Pike speak multiple full sentences throughout the process.

“My arm feels like it’s about to bust. One spot is really throbbing,” WKRN reporter Tori Gessner heard Ms. Pike say. Ms. Gessner, who has witnessed several executions, said, “Nothing about today was normal, typical, at all.”

The blinds closed at 7:46 pm, but witnesses could still hear Ms. Pike breathing. When the blinds reopened three minutes later, she was still breathing and began snoring, according to witnesses.

The blinds closed again at 8:05 pm and prison officials removed witnesses from the room at 8:53 pm. Even after the microphone was cut off, they could still hear Ms. Pike breathing.

No officials with the Tennessee Department of Correction appeared at the press conference or spoke to the media. The department did not provide a statement for more than two hours, saying in an email that it stood by its protocol and that Ms. Pike had been taken to an off-site medical facility.

Ms. Pike’s attorneys filed an emergency motion to stay the execution and provide medical care to Ms. Pike, writing that even after executioners injected both syringes of lethal injection chemicals, she “has not lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat.”

At 10:05 pm, the Tennessean reported that a federal judge ruled the request was moot because the State said that medical care was already being administered.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced shortly before midnight that the state is pausing all executions for the rest of the year. He called for a “comprehensive, third-party review” of what happened to Christa Pike.

A History of Botched Executions

This is the second botched execution attempt in Tennessee in fewer than five months.

On May 21, prison officials strapped Tony Carruthers to a gurney and subjected him to multiple painful and bloody punctures to access his veins while he writhed in agony for an extended period of time before Tennessee’s executioners declared they could not execute him.

This is also the second time that Gov. Lee has paused executions in the wake of a botched execution.

In 2022, a moratorium was declared to allow for a third-party investigation into “operational failures” in Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol after an undisclosed “technical oversight” led the governor to call off the execution of Oscar Smith on April 21, 2022.

Two top corrections officials were fired after that review found that lethal injection drugs were not tested as required by Tennessee’s protocol.

Indeed, the review found that corrections officials failed to tell the pharmacy that made and tested lethal injection drugs that it was required to test all injection chemicals for endotoxins. The State never even gave the pharmacy a copy of the lethal injection protocol, the report revealed.