Tennessee failed to execute the only woman on death row as scheduled Wednesday after injecting her with a lethal drug, a stunning development after the Supreme Court stepped in to allow the state to put her to death.
Christa Pike’s lawyers said Wednesday evening that she was being treated at a hospital, but that they did not know her condition. A Department of Corrections spokesperson did not respond to an emailed question about whether she was alive, but said she was “transported to an off-site medical facility.”
Pike, 50, is the only woman on the state’s death row. She was convicted of murdering a classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in 1995, when she was 18, and sentenced to death.
At a news conference Wednesday evening, reporters who witnessed the botched execution described Pike’s snoring and complaints about pain, as well as kicking herself so often that she dropped the sheets placed on her. Sometimes the curtain was closed and the journalists heard only sounds.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court seeking to stay his execution, Pike’s lawyers said witnesses saw executioners inject “both syringes of deadly chemicals” but that Pike remained alive.
They said Pike “did not lose consciousness and still had a heartbeat” and that the death chamber curtains “fell twice,” according to the attorneys.
In a telephone interview with NBC News early Thursday morning, May Martinez, the mother of victim Slemmer, described the failed execution attempt.
“It was a disaster,” she said.
Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, said in a statement that he was ordering “a thorough third-party review to determine exactly what happened.” He added that the last remaining execution this year in Tennessee will not go ahead as planned.
“Nothing was normal today”
An ambulance was seen arriving at the prison where Pike was to be executed, then leaving. Medical aid was being administered, according to online federal court records.
“It appeared that it didn’t happen the way they thought it would,” said John North, an investigative producer at WBIR television in Knoxville. “But we don’t know that. When we left the building, as far as we know, she was probably still alive.”
Tori Gessner, a reporter and anchor for Nashville’s WKRN who has witnessed five executions in the state, said at a news conference that “nothing about that day was normal, typical at all.”
Gessner said that at 7:34 p.m., Pike was heard saying, “My arm feels like it’s about to burst.” Pike then talked about that spot on his arm and asked, “Is it like that?” » said Gessner.
A Department of Corrections spokesperson said the state “followed every step of the state’s legal and established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office” and that “the lethal chemical injection contained in the protocol was always effective.”
This is the second time this year that an execution has not gone as planned in Tennessee. Tony Carruthers, convicted of three murders in 1994, was given a one-year reprieve after executioners failed to find a vein for a backup IV in May.
“Tonight, the State of Tennessee has once again failed to carry out a lawful execution,” Pike’s attorneys said in a statement.
The execution warrant for Pike was set to expire at midnight local time (1 a.m. ET Thursday). The Department of Corrections did not immediately say whether or when they would attempt another execution.
Pike’s execution process began around 8 p.m., his lawyers said, after the Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s order Wednesday morning that had temporarily blocked the operation.
The High Court’s decision, hours later, ended a series of last-minute legal maneuvers in a bid by Pike’s defense team to spare his life. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told The Associated Press that what Pike experienced is “singular and unprecedented.”
The mother of the furious victim
“They went to try to execute her and she didn’t die,” said Martinez, who wanted the execution to take place and was furious with the state governor, the Department of Corrections director and the attorney general.
Martinez told NBC News that Pike never expressed remorse during Wednesday’s attempted execution. “Not nothing… about what happened, you know, to Colleen,” Martinez said.
She criticized officials’ communications.
“They didn’t say anything and then all of a sudden they asked all the victims to leave. And we left,” Martinez said.
“We didn’t know anything until we got to the office and saw the commissioner,” Martinez said. “And he said it didn’t work…and she was on her way to the hospital.”
When asked what his message was to the governor and attorney general, Martinez was terse in his response: “They fucked up. »
Pike was to become the first woman in more than 200 years to be put to death by the state, according to historical records.
Pike does not deny Slemmer’s brutal murder, which saw her and two teenage accomplices work together to torture, slash and fatally beat 19-year-old Slemmer. The case became sensational when investigators said it was linked to the occult because someone had carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest and Pike bragged to another student that she had kept a fragment of the victim’s skull as a “souvenir.”
But Pike’s current supporters argue the state should consider his age at the time, his mental illness and his allegations of serious sexual abuse. “I was an 18-year-old with a mental illness. It took me many years to realize the severity of what I had done,” Pike said.
Appeals court stayed execution due to child abuse complaints
About an hour before his scheduled execution at 10 a.m. local time in Nashville, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it must review his lawyers’ allegations. At issue was whether Pike could reopen a legal proceeding centered on her allegations that she was sexually abused as a child — abuse that the state did not contest during a special hearing in August.
In a split decision, the appeals court granted a “brief” stay suspending its execution “in order to properly analyze the parties’ fully presented arguments and resolve the issues on the merits.”
In turn, the state attorney general’s office asked the Supreme Court to intervene, arguing that the execution should continue to “avoid rewarding Pike’s abusive delaying tactics.”
In their dissent, the three liberal justices wrote that vacating the lower court’s temporary stay of execution “interferes with the Sixth Circuit’s routine administrative handling of a capital case and needlessly prevents this court from giving due consideration to Pike’s request.”
“I see no reason to short-circuit the ordinary process of appellate review, particularly in light of the serious consequences of an erroneous decision,” Sotomayor wrote.
Lee and the Supreme Court said this week they would not stop Pike’s execution.
Before learning Monday that Lee would not intervene in his case, Pike wrote in a letter to NBC News, shared by his spiritual advisor: “Whether my pardon is granted or not, I am at peace. »
“I am not afraid of dying,” wrote Pike, who has been on death row for more than three decades. “I’m just nervous about the process.”
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