Tennessee’s governor has halted executions in the state after another botched attempt. Convicted murderer Christa Pike, 50, survived two doses of a lethal drug during her planned execution Wednesday.
And that was the end of an already chaotic day. Just an hour before Pike was originally scheduled to die, a federal appeals court stopped the execution. Hours later, the Supreme Court cleared the way for it to go forward.
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Botched attempt
Then came an execution that witnesses say was like nothing they’d seen before.
At 7:46 p.m. local time, after administering the first dose of pentobarbital, prison officials closed the curtain to the media room before reopening it three minutes later. Reporters said Pike could be heard snoring loudly, and the curtain was closed again at 8:06 p.m.
Reporters said they could still hear Pike snoring behind the curtain until the microphone was cut off at about 8:53 p.m.
“Basically, all I have to say is they went through two rounds, and she was still breathing at the end,” WPLN reporter Catherine Sweeney said. “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. None of it was normal. I covered all the executions last year and most of the ones this year. We haven’t seen anything like it.”
Not the first issue
This isn’t Tennessee’s first failed execution this year. In May, the state called off another after the execution team spent more than an hour trying and failing to establish an I.V. line.
Now, Gov. Bill Lee has called off the state’s only remaining execution this year and ordered a “comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred.”
In a statement, he said, “Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective.”
The Tennessee Department of Correction says it followed the state’s protocol during Wednesday’s execution attempt.
The state’s protocol provides for a second set of drugs if the first doesn’t kill the inmate, but it doesn’t say what to do if the inmate is still alive after the second.
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