American Christa Pike, sentenced to death in the state of Tennessee, is conscious after being hospitalized due to a botched execution after receiving two lethal injections that failed to achieve the execution. This has been confirmed by his legal team, who has reported that, “against all odds”, he is now receiving medical treatment. “Despite the serious injuries she has suffered to her arms, she remains handcuffed and chained to the bed,” her lawyers have noted.
Pike’s recovery has “no precedent from a medical point of view”, since, as her representatives have stated, the murderer’s prognosis “remains uncertain and a long recovery is predicted.” After this, the head of the Department of Corrections of the state of Tennessee, Frank Strada, has resigned after the failed execution of Pike, a situation that also motivated him to suspend executions. Now, criticism of the state of Tennessee has been revived for its handling of executions, after having to suspend another last May for an incident similar to that of Pike.
The failed execution and the Pike case
The murderer, 50 years old and who has been on death row in Tennessee for almost 30 years, during the execution was given two doses of pentobarbital – a medication that acts as a sedative and sleep inducer – which she survived. The witnesses who administered the doses were able to hear Pike breathing for almost an hour after receiving the treatment.
The woman was convicted in 1996 of murdering, beating and torturing a fellow student with her then-boyfriend when she was 18 years old. If the execution had been carried out, she would become the first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years and the 19th in the entire country.
An incomplete execution
Witnesses described a procedure much longer than anticipated. Pike stayed awake for much of the first phase, even talking to officials. During this first phase, the journalists present observed that Pike was still breathing. Shortly after, in a second phase, a second round of drug administration began.
The procedure establishes the use of four syringes, two of them with 50 milliliters of pentobarbital and allows the administration to be repeated. US broadcaster WPLN noted that the instructions do not specify what happens if a person remains alive after receiving both batches.
After the second round, the witnesses again heard breathing and loud snoring and observed head and neck movements. Almost two hours after the beginning of the procedure, the unfinished execution was terminated.
