Tennessee failed in its attempt Wednesday night to execute convicted killer Christa Pike, leaving the woman in critical condition in a hospital and reigniting a debate over the future of lethal injection as a way to carry out the death penalty.
Gov. Bill Lee paused further executions, delaying one scheduled for later this year, as he called for a review of what went wrong. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican who is likely to win the election in November to succeed Mr. Lee, said she will seek to restore the electric chair as a method of capital punishment.
Pike’s attorney, Randy Spivey, said Thursday that she was clinging to life. Beyond that, things were unclear.
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“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 lifesaving medical care,” he said. “Last night was not just inefficient; it was cruel, and it was torturous. It was also predictable.”
Groups that crusade against capital punishment have called on the state to commute Pike’s capital sentence.
State officials were trying to figure out what went wrong at Nashville’s Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.
Pike, 50, was given two doses of pentobarbital, the drug that has become a standard in lethal injections.
Her attorneys said she started to writhe in pain and then fell into a snore-filled slumber.
Will Puckett of Knoxville CBS affiliate WVLT-TV, who witnessed the execution attempt, said Pike began kicking so much that she knocked off the sheets that had been laid on top of her. Minutes later, Mr. Puckett said, Pike made noises that sounded as if she were choking.
Tori Gessner of Nashville ABC affiliate WKRN-TV said Pike could be heard saying that her arm “feels like it’s about to burst open.”
“I’ve witnessed five executions in Tennessee,” Ms. Gessner said. “Nothing about today was normal or typical at all.”
The state’s Department of Corrections defended its procedure, saying it followed “every step of the state’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the attorney general’s office.”
The defense team had warned that a lethal injection would be difficult for Pike, who has had trouble with blood draws throughout her life and has a blood disorder that makes hooking up an IV challenging.
Pike was convicted of the 1995 torture and murder of classmate Colleen Slemmer, 19.
She, her teenage boyfriend and another teen accomplice lured Slemmer into the woods in January 1995 so they could torture her to death.
Pike’s boyfriend, then-17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp, carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest while she was still alive. He was given a life sentence for the killing.
Pike delivered the fatal blow when she bashed Slemmer’s head in with a chunk of asphalt. Prosecutors said Pike then took a piece of Slemmer’s broken skull with her as a souvenir from the attack.
The three were arrested 36 hours after Slemmer’s killing. When the 1996 trial concluded, a jury convicted Pike of the murder in less than three hours of deliberations. She has been on death row since then.
Ms. Blackburn said the botched execution was “tragic” for Slemmer’s relatives and said Pike “should have been executed long ago.”
“While there should be a thorough review of what happened and why the process failed, the answer is simple: Bring back the electric chair and deliver justice for these victims swiftly. As your governor, I will do just that,” she vowed.
Lethal injection became the standard for the federal government and 27 states that still allow capital punishment, replacing the electric chair and gas chamber. It was supposed to be a more humane method.
However, debates over the required drugs have complicated matters.
Under pressure from activists, pharmaceutical companies and foreign suppliers became unwilling to supply some of the drugs used.
Executions at the federal level had been halted for years earlier this century while authorities evaluated drug options. In 2019, the Justice Department settled on pentobarbital.
Data gathered by the Death Penalty Information Center found that 2% of 4,374 electric chair executions from 1890 through 2010 were botched, compared with more than 7% of the 1,054 lethal injection executions attempted over that period.
Pike committed her crime when she was 18, the youngest age eligible for the death penalty. She had a volatile upbringing.
Amnesty International, which opposes the death penalty, said Pike’s 1996 trial never discussed the extensive sexual abuse and neglect she suffered as a child, nor how that contributed to her mental state at the time of the murder.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had issued a late stay of her execution, originally scheduled for Wednesday morning.
The state rushed to the Supreme Court, which lifted the stay, allowing the execution attempt to proceed. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, all nominated by Democratic presidents, dissented from that ruling.
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers said Pike’s case challenges the idea behind the death penalty.
“Christa’s story lays bare the inhumanity of the death penalty, and of our entire criminal legal system,” NACDL President Missy Owen said in a statement. “Christa was only 18 at the time of the crime — an emerging adult whose brain had not fully matured. She endured years of sexual assault beginning when she was a toddler. Yet she was sentenced to die.”
May Martinez, Slemmer’s mother, told NBC News that the state “f——- up.”
“They went to try to execute her, and she didn’t die,” Ms. Martinez said.
Ms. Martinez said she was angry with Mr. Lee and prison officials for failing to kill the woman who showed no remorse for murdering her daughter more than 30 years ago.
The debacle Wednesday occurred after Tennessee aborted its planned May execution of convicted murderer Tony Carruthers after officials struggled to find a vein to administer a backup IV.
It did execute Anthony Darrell Dugard Hines in August, using lethal injection.
The last use of the electric chair in Tennessee was in 2020. Convicted murderer Nicholas Todd Sutton was given the choice of the chair or the injection. He was convicted of killing three people, including his grandmother.
Pike was set to become the 30th person executed this year, and the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years, until the lethal injection did not take hold.
“It was not a fear of dying, it was a fear of prolonged, painful, traumatic death,” Pike’s attorney, Steve Kissinger, said Thursday. “And that’s what happened minus the death.”
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