Death row inmate Christa Pike still alive after execution attempt, according to witnesses
Christa Pike is still alive following a failed execution attempt, with her lawyer saying she was taken to hospital.
Pike, 50, had been set to become the first woman executed in the state of Tennessee in 200 years after a decision to grant her a stay of execution was overturned on Wednesday (30 September).
This meant that the execution, which was initially planned for 10am Wednesday, was re-scheduled for later in the day.
However, Pike’s lawyer Kelly Gleason said two syringes of the lethal injection drugs had been administered to her but that she remained ‘alive and snoring’.
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Gleason said her client ‘needs immediate medical care’.
Pike’s legal team filed an emergency motion to halt the execution after she was given two doses of the drug.
"At 8:26pm execution witnesses reported that the executioners had injected both syringes of lethal injection chemicals and Pike is still alive and snoring," her lawyers wrote in the motion seen by USA TODAY.
"This execution is causing Ms. Pike unnecessary agony and occurring in violation of his right to be executed free of cruel and unusual punishment."
In an update to the BBC, one of her legal team said Pike was 'being provided life-saving measures' in hospital following the execution attempt.
Several witnesses from the media recalled what had happened minute by minute, confirming they had been led into the witness chamber outside the death chamber at 6:41pm.
They said that at 7.26pm, Pike was strapped to the gurney.
At this point several reporters said that Pike was speaking, including saying her arm hurt.
At 7.46pm the curtains closed but witnesses said they could still hear breathing and at 7.49pm the curtains reopened.
The blinds closed for the second time at 8.05pm and witnesses said they continued to hear breathing over the microphone until it was cut off.
They were asked to leave the witness chamber at 8:53pm.
Witnesses said they also heard 'heavy snoring' and 'squeaks' coming from Pike in the moments ahead of her death, while another said it was taking 'abnormally long' for a typical execution.
Tori Gessner, a journalist at WKRN who said she has witnessed several executions, said: "Nothing about today was normal, typical, at all."
In a statement, The Tennessee Department of Correction confirmed she'd been taken to an 'off-site medical facility'.
"The Tennessee Department of Correction followed every step of the state’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office," the statement said. "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."
Why was Christa Pike given 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.”
Claire Reid