Tennessee Inmate Survives an Execution by Two Lethal Injections
Christa Pike, 50, was taken to hospital and given life-saving treatment after an attempt to execute her with two syringes of pentobarbital failed, her lawyers said. Her legal team filed an emergency motion while it was under way, stating that she “has lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat and is audibly snoring”. The Supreme Court had cleared the execution to proceed hours earlier.
Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, whom she and her then boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp beat, tortured and killed when Pike was 18; the three had met at a job training camp for troubled teenagers. The legal position now is genuinely unsettled. A prisoner who has survived a completed attempt and is being kept alive in hospital raises a question American courts have rarely had to answer, which is whether the state may try a second time. The victim’s mother, May Martinez, who had wanted the execution carried out, summarised the evening in three words: “It was a mess.” Pentobarbital has sat at the centre of repeated contested executions as legitimate supplies have narrowed and states have turned to compounded versions made to order. Watch whether Tennessee seeks a fresh death warrant, and whether any court is willing to stop it.