Tennessee Governor Bill Lee declared on Thursday that the state’s botched execution of a death row inmate was “deeply disturbing,” noting the prisoner remained conscious and snoring 40 minutes after receiving a doubled dose of the drug intended to cause her death.
Lee, a Republican, has halted all executions within the state through at least the end of the year and launched an independent investigation following Wednesday night’s unsuccessful attempt to carry out the death sentence on Christa Pike, a convicted murderer, in the Nashville execution chamber.
Pike, 50, remained hospitalized Thursday afternoon. “We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment, but we do know that she is alive right now and receiving life-saving medical care,” Randy Spivey, a member of her legal team, told reporters during a Thursday afternoon press briefing.
“She is in critical condition receiving life-saving care. That is the extent of what we have at the moment,” Spivey added.
Spivey, representing the office of the post-conviction defender, criticized the conduct of Tennessee authorities throughout the failed procedure, noting that officials inserted seven needles, one of which was damaged as it was withdrawn from Pike’s arm.
“Last night was not just inefficient, it was cruel and it was torturous. It was also predictable,” he stated, observing that no life-saving medical intervention appeared to occur after the execution was aborted around 8:25 p.m.
During a Thursday morning briefing, Lee confirmed he had contacted Frank Strada, the secretary of the Tennessee Department of Correction, though he possessed no new information regarding Pike’s condition after she survived two doses of pentobarbital and was transferred to an off-site medical facility.
“This is a tragedy,” Lee said, noting he had not yet contacted Pike’s family or the relatives of the teenager she murdered in 1995. “There is no one that wanted what happened last night to happen. It shouldn’t have happened.
“It’s the most difficult of circumstances as it relates to the sentence that should have been carried out by the state. It’s a tragedy, and it’s deeply disturbing that that has happened in this state. The people deserve better than that,” Lee said.
In remarks relayed by The Tennessean, Lee also noted he had not yet selected an investigator to head the “comprehensive, third party review” he announced late Wednesday.
“There are a lot of questions,” he said. “The people of our state deserve to have those questions answered. I’m highly disappointed, along with Tennesseans, about what happened.”
Cameron Sexton, the Republican speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives, announced on Thursday that he and fellow legislators would also probe the execution failure, exploring measures to prevent future errors.
“We will look at all options – expanding the alternatives, and changing the current medications to include potassium chloride,” Sexton said. “Thirty years is too long for justice.”
Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, stated her organization was aware of seven other cases where execution teams failed to access a vein, causing medical complications for inmates, though none remained alive after receiving the injection drugs.
“This failed attempt is the worst we’ve ever seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era,” she said in a statement.
“What happened to Christa Pike can be attributed to the extreme secrecy Tennessee officials have maintained about their execution procedures, their refusal to answer reasonable questions and their unwillingness to accept responsibility for their mistakes.”
In May, Tennessee officials canceled the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, another convicted murderer, after struggling for over an hour to establish an intravenous line.
Pike, who received a death sentence for the brutal killing of a teenage classmate, was poised to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in over two centuries.
The procedure was permitted to proceed only after the U.S. Supreme Court intervened late Wednesday to vacate a federal stay issued earlier, citing the need to evaluate whether Pike’s claims of childhood sexual abuse had been fully weighed during her 1996 sentencing.
Pike’s attorneys subsequently filed an emergency motion with the Tennessee Supreme Court following the administration of the second pentobarbital dose, seeking to halt the execution. They argued she was enduring “unnecessary agony” and that the state was violating her constitutional right to be executed without cruel and unusual punishment.
A representative for the state corrections department defended the handling of the botched attempt.
“The Tennessee Department of Correction followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office,” said spokesperson Dorinda Carter. “The lethal injection chemical in the protocol has consistently been effective, and the protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out this evening. Christa Pike has been transported to an off-site medical facility.”
According to the Associated Press, Tennessee’s protocol mandates a secondary set of drug syringes if an inmate is not deceased after the first, but it does not specify protocols for a subject still alive following the second set.
Seven journalists present at the Riverbend maximum security facility as witnesses recounted their observations from a WVLT livestream shortly after the execution chamber curtains were drawn for the final time.
They reported that Pike was snoring as corrections officials escorted them from the room.
John North of ABC affiliate WBIR remarked: “It appears this did not go how this was supposed to go. When we left the building, so far as we knew, she was probably still alive.”
Pike and her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp were 18 and 17, respectively, when they and a female friend tortured and killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at Knoxville Job Corps, in January 1995 using boxcutters and a rock.
The case attracted national attention because of the suspects’ youth and the savagery of the attack, during which Shipp carved a pentagram into the victim’s chest and Pike later exhibited a fragment of her skull to a friend.
Pike never denied the killing and was subsequently diagnosed with mental health disorders.
“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done,” she wrote in a clemency petition that Lee and the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately rejected.
Lee’s suspension order also impacts the only other execution scheduled in Tennessee this year. Gary Wayne Sutton, a death row inmate since 1996 convicted of murdering a friend, was set to be executed on December 3.
The Associated Press contributed reporting