Man who witnessed Christa Pike's attempted execution describes haunting moment they knew something was wrong
A man who witnessed the botched execution of Christa Pike has revealed the moment that people in the chamber realised that something had gone wrong.
Will Puckett is a reporter who was one of seven journalists allowed into the execution chamber to witness Pike's sentence being carried out.
Pike is currently in a critical condition after surviving being given two doses of pentobarbitol. She is reportedly the only person to survive being administered 5mg of the drug.
Puckett said that at 7:46pm, after Pike was given the dose of pentobarbitol, officials closed the curtains for three minutes, and when the curtain reopened Pike was snoring.
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The curtains were again closed at 8:05pm.
"There was a bunch [of people saying]: 'This obviously is not going right. What can you tell us? Why are we not viewing this?'" said Puckett.
Pike could still be heard snoring behind the curtain for nearly an hour afterwards, before the microphone in the execution chamber was cut off at around 8:53pm, and media witnesses were escorted from the room.
The botched execution was the latest in a serious of executions where the condemned person survived, and was met with condemnation and renewed calls for the death penalty to be banned in the US.
Sandra Babcock is a death penalty scholar at Cornell law school, and also advises Pike's legal team.
Speaking to The Guardian, she called the botched execution 'unimaginably barbaric', and said that the events leading up to it 'demand accountability'.
Pike's execution had been cleared to go ahead more than 30 years after she was first sentenced to death for the murder of Colleen Slemmer, 19, when Pike herself was just 18 years old.
Pike and her boyfriend at the time lured Slemmer to a wooded area where they tortured and killed her, with Pike being discovered after she kept a piece of the victim's skull.
The case has drawn a huge amount of attention after attorneys representing Pike drew attention to the horrific and prolonged abuse that she suffered as a child.
This included being sexually abused by her grandfather as an infant, as well as by a neighbour who was known as a paedophile in the community, and who continued living close to Pike despite her reporting the abuse.
Pike had also attempted suicide multiple times when she was a child, and was subject to physical and emotional abuse at home in addition to the sexual abuse she suffered.
Tennessee governor Bill Lee is a strong advocate for the death penalty, and has previously attempted to introduce the death penalty in the state for perpetrators of child sex abuse, even though the US Supreme Court prohibits the death penalty for crimes not involving murder.
However, despite advocates for introducing the death penalty for this crime citing the 'permanent psychological, emotional, and sometimes physical impact on the child', the sexual abuse Pike suffered as a child and the impact it had on her was not enough to convince Lee to grant clemency, and her execution was scheduled to go ahead.
Lee has now paused executions in the state after Pike's sentence was not properly carried out.
Kit Roberts