Execution attempt of Pike fails

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(The Center Square) – Christa Pike survived two injections that were to be lethal, fulfilling a Tennessee death penalty sentence Wednesday evening and was taken to a hospital for care, according to her lawyers.

Her condition Thursday was critical, said her lawyers. Attorney Randy Spivey, at a news conference, said he didn't have a prognosis.

The mother of the 19-year-old Pike was convicting of killing in 1995, May Martinez, in published reports said she didn't get justice for her daughter Colleen Slemmer.

It’s the second time the state has experienced a failed execution this year. Second-term Republican Gov. Bill Lee said a third-party review is forthcoming to determine what happened, and the only other execution planned this calendar year is on pause in the interim in addition to that of Pike.

“This is a tragedy,” Lee said on Thursday. “There is no one that wanted what happened last night to happen. It shouldn’t have happened.”

Witnesses say the 50-year-old was snoring after being given two doses of pentobarbital, the second having been administered at 8:26 p.m. local time. At 8:53 p.m., the microphone and speaker system for the viewing area was silenced and media witnesses were escorted out.

An ambulance took her from the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Lawyers filed an emergency motion to the state Supreme Court on Wednesday night seeking a stay, citing “unnecessary agony,” and violation of the right to execution free of cruel and unusual punishment.

Motions were also filed to a district court and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Tennessee’s protocol is a second set of drug syringes “if the inmate is not deceased.” There’s no direction for what to do if the inmate is alive after two attempts.

Earlier Wednesday, a 10 a.m. execution was scuttled by a stay from the 6th Circuit. On Monday, Lee had said he would not stop the execution, and Tuesday the state Supreme Court also refused to stop it.

The last Tennessee woman dying from the death penalty was Martin Eve in 1820 by hanging.

According to testimony and prosecutors, Pike was 18 in 1995 when Slemmer was killed. Prosecutors say Pike and two accomplices tortured, slashed and fatally beat her at the University of Tennessee. All were part of a Job Corps training program.

A pentagram was carved into Slemmer’s chest. Investigators say Pike bragged of keeping a skull fragment as a “souvenir.”

She was also convicted of attempted murder in 2001 after trying to strangle another prisoner with a shoestring.

Tony Carruthers is the other Tennessee inmate this year to have endured a failed execution. Executioners failed for more than an hour to place an IV to administer pentobarbital. He was convicted of killing three people in 1994.

Eighteen women have been put to death since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

An execution in Florida on Tuesday was the 29th in the nation this year.