What happened in Tennessee's failed execution of Christa Pike and what comes next?
Christa Pike, pictured here at age 36, was convicted for the 1995 killing of a classmate. She survived two doses of lethal injections in a failed execution in Tennessee on Wednesday. (Tennessee Department of Correction/Reuters)Social SharingChrista Pike was to be the first woman executed in the U.S. state of Tennessee in 200 years.
But the 50-year-old, who was convicted of killing a classmate at age 18, survived two doses of lethal injections after what media observers and experts say was a "very rare" and "unprecedented" failed execution on Wednesday.
Pike's case had drawn widespread national attention as her lawyers and supporters tried to secure a stay of execution, citing her age at the time of the crime and a history of severe childhood abuse.
Her execution was delayed by several hours after a U.S. appeals court ordered a stay pending a legal review of Pike's abuse claims, but the Supreme Court ultimately ruled it could proceed.
Austin Sarat, a professor at Amherst College in Massachusetts and an expert on the death penalty, said about eight per cent of lethal injections in the U.S. have been "botched," meaning something went wrong during the procedure, but the person nevertheless died.
But "what happened to Christa Pike was not a botched execution; it was a failed execution, and it's very rare," Sarat told CBC News in an interview Thursday.
"In Pike's case, insofar as we know it, the pentobarbital β the lethal drugs β had started to flow and had reached her body. That puts us in uncharted territory."
Here's what we know about what happened and what comes next.
The southern U.S. state administers pentobarbital, a barbiturate, in lethal injections.
According to the Tennessee Department of Correction's lethal injection protocol, in effect since last year and shared online by the non-profit Death Penalty Information Center, the state administers 100 millilitres of pentobarbital (for a total of 5 grams).
"If the inmate is not deceased" after that, then a second dose is given to the person, the protocol states. There is nothing in the protocol about what to do if the second lethal dose fails.
Emergency vehicles arrive at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution after Pike's failed execution on Wednesday in Nashville. (George Walker IV/The Associated Press)Timeline of Pike's executionThe execution had been scheduled for 10 a.m. local time Wednesday but was delayed until the evening due to legal appeals.
Catherine Sweeney, a health reporter at WPLN News, said Wednesday that Pike had been given two separate rounds of pentobarbital but was still breathing when she and the other media witnesses were told to leave.
"It was very ragged. She lifted her head up and was looking around at one point. She said that there was a spot that was burning and hurting, and asked if that was normal," Sweeney said during a news conference.
"None of it was normal," she added. "I covered all the executions last year and most of the ones this year. We haven't seen anything like it. It went really poorly."
'None of it was normal,' WPLN News reporter Catherine Sweeney said of Pike's failed execution during a news conference on Wednesday. (George Walker IV/The Associated Press)Another media witness, Tori Gessner of Nashville's WKRN, gave a timeline of events:
"Nothing about today was normal, typical β at all," Gessner told reporters.
Corinna Lain, chair of law at the University of Richmond in Virginia who has written extensively about lethal injection in the U.S., outlined three possibilities: The drug may have been degraded; the IV may have come out of Pike's vein, sending the injection into her bodily tissue; or Pike's body simply may not have reacted as expected.
But Lain stressed that "we don't know" for sure, and "that's part of the problem."
"This entire thing is covered in secrecy and it's quite perverse that the state at its most powerful moment β at the apex of its power β is killing people under a veil of secrecy," she told CBC News.
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In a news release late Wednesday, the Tennessee Department of Correction said it followed the state's execution protocol.
"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."
Asked for more information about why the execution failed and on Pike's current condition, the department told CBC News in an email that it had no further comment beyond its earlier statement.
One of Pike's lawyers, Randy Spivey, told reporters on Thursday that she was alive and receiving "life-saving medical care." But he said her exact condition remained unknown.
"We at this point do not know the ramifications of the chemical torture that she has endured," he said. Her lawyers called for Pike's death sentence to be commuted.
People participate in a March 4 Mercy protest against the death penalty at the Tennessee State Capitol on Sept. 27. (George Walker IV/The Associated Press)Will Tennessee try to execute Pike again?That also remains unclear, but Lain said the state can try again, as per a 1947 U.S. Supreme Court decision issued after an inmate survived his execution by electric chair.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on Wednesday said he ordered a "comprehensive, third-party review" of Pike's execution. "Therefore, the remaining scheduled execution will not be carried out this year," he said in a statement, as reported by AP.
A spokesperson for the governor did not immediately respond to CBC News' emailed questions about whether the state would try to execute Pike again, and if so, when.
In May, Lee granted a one-year reprieve to another death row inmate, Tony Von Carruthers, after his execution was called off when officers failed to find a vein to administer the lethal injection.
But Sarat at Amherst College said while Pike's case raises a legal issue, it also involves a "simple matter of human decency."
"The government when it kills, or tries to kill, has an obligation to get it right. If it fails, it doesn't get another chance," he said. "One bite at the apple. That should be the norm, and Christa Pike should never have to face this horror again."
Jillian Kestler-D'Amours is a senior writer at CBC based in Montreal. You can reach her at jillian.kestler-d.amours@cbc.ca.
