Last words Christa Pike spoke before being hospitalised for two botched lethal injection attempts
Christa Pike has been hospitalised after two unsuccessful attempts to execute her by lethal injection were carried out.
Her legal representatives say she is still alive and underwent 'life-saving measures' as two syringes of pentobarbital were injected into her but her heart was still beating.
Pike, who has spent 30 years on death row after she was sentenced to death for the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995, was allowed witnesses to her execution at 6:26pm yesterday (30 September), the Nashville Banner reports.
She was the first woman set to be executed in Tennessee in 200 years, and had refused her final meal.
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When she entered the execution chamber she said what had been expected as her final words, with her saying: "I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life, and that is with love.
"I’m at peace, I’m ready to be free. This is a happy day."
She then repeated a message with Reverend Mikey Noechel, saying: "May you be at peace. May you be kind and gentle to yourself."
Pike also addressed this message to the 'people behind the glass', and she and the reverend sang a song with the words 'I love you'.
She pointed towards a spot on her arm and said it felt like it was about to burst, asking the reverend if that was supposed to happen with him telling her to relax.
"I'm trying," she replied, with her breathing becoming more laboured.
At 7:46pm the viewing curtain was closed and Reverend Noechel was asked to leave, three minutes later it was opened and he was asked to come back into the execution chamber.
By 8:05pm Pike was snoring and the curtain was shut again, and remained so for about another 50 minutes before the microphone from the execution chamber was switched off and the witnesses were asked to leave as the death row inmate was still breathing.
Tennessee lethal injection protocols require two doses of the deadly pentobarbital, but the rules don't account for what happens if the person being executed has survived them.
An ambulance with Pike in it left the prison at 9:28pm, and her legal team said she was being provided with 'life-saving measures' in hospital.
Per the BBC, her lawyers said: "Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution.
"We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy."
After she didn't die from the lethal injection her legal team filed an emergency motion for a stay of execution and medical care, which was provided.
The Tennessee Department of Correction says it 'followed every step of the State's lawful, established execution protocol'.
Why was Christa Pike given the death penalty?
Pike was sent to death row for the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995.
On 12 January 1995, an 18-year-old Pike, her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and friend Shadolla Peterson lured Slemmer to a secluded woodland in Knoxville.
According to court documents, Pike and Shipp then brutally attacked Slemmer, while Peterson kept watch.
The beating lasted around 30 minutes, and saw them carve a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest, before Pike then killed the 19-year-old by delivering a fatal blow to the head, court documents claimed.
During her incarceration, Pike’s legal team argued that she should not have been given the death penalty due to her age when committing the crime and her troubled background.
Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said she was abused as a child and was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post traumatic stress disorder.
In her clemency petition, Pike wrote: “I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I’d done.
"Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime.”
Joe Harker