NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee officials failed Wednesday to put Christa Gayle Pike to death in the 1995 murder after she administered two doses of a lethal drug. In what one death penalty expert says is an unprecedented failure, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has put a moratorium on remaining executions for the rest of the year.
Lawyers for Pike, 50, said he was still alive and snoring loudly and was taken from the prison in an ambulance after the lethal injection attempt. She is being treated in hospital, but they say they were not informed of her condition.
Read more: Court halts execution of Christa Gail Pike for murder she committed when she was 18 in Tennessee
She was scheduled to be executed at 10 a.m. Wednesday for a murder she committed when she was 18, making her the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. An appeals court halted the lethal injection an hour before it was to begin, and hours later the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the stay.
Pike’s attorneys said in court documents filed late Wednesday that officers gave Pike two doses of pentobarbital.
Gov. Bill Lee said in a statement that he had ordered “a comprehensive third-party review to determine exactly what happened” and that the remaining scheduled executions would not take place this year.
“The execution of sentences imposed by law is one of the state’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect that sentences to be carried out in a legal and constitutional manner and to be carried out effectively,” he said.
watch: The number of executions in the U.S. has recently increased after years of decline. What’s behind it?
The Tennessee Department of Corrections said in a statement that it “followed every step of the state’s legal, established enforcement protocols” approved by the Attorney General’s Office.
The state’s enforcement protocol calls for a second set of drug syringes to be used after the first “if the inmate does not die.” It doesn’t say what happens if the object is still alive after the second set.
Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said Pike’s experience was “unique and unparalleled.”
She said seven other people survived because execution teams failed to gain access to intravenous injections of lethal injection drugs, but none survived after receiving the drugs used in executions.
Media witnesses detailed the execution
Media witnesses watching from another room said officials pulled back the execution chamber curtains at 7:27 p.m. to reveal Pike strapped to a gurney.
“I will leave this world the way I have spent most of my life, which is love,” she said in her “final” words. She describes herself as calm.
But Pike remained awake and at one point looked up and asked prison officials if she was supposed to feel that way in her arm. It’s unclear what she was referring to.
At 8:26 p.m., witnesses to the execution reported that the second dose of pentobarbital had been administered.
Pike continued to snore behind closed curtains until the microphone was cut off at 8:53 p.m., when a call was made to escort media witnesses out of the area.
Pike’s attorneys filed an emergency motion with the Tennessee Supreme Court late Wednesday, seeking an immediate halt and stay of execution, saying Pike is in “unnecessary suffering” that violates her right to be executed without cruel and unusual punishment. They also filed motions in the Sixth Circuit and district courts.
This is the second time this year that Tennessee has failed to carry out an execution: In May, state officials canceled the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers. The executioners of Tony Carruthers, convicted of the 1994 kidnapping and murder of three people, tried and failed to administer intravenous pentobarbital for more than an hour.
Parker and her boyfriend were convicted of stabbing and beating classmate Colleen Slemmer, 19, at a vocational training facility in Knoxville in 1995. The case attracted widespread attention in part because of the pentagram carved on Slimer’s body, but other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.
Appeal the stay immediately
Pike was initially scheduled to be executed in the morning, and witnesses gathered at Nashville’s Riverbend Maximum Security Facility when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit voted 2-1 to stay the execution. The court said it needed to defer consideration of whether Pike’s allegations of child sexual abuse were fully taken into account in sentencing.
The attorney general’s office appealed to the Supreme Court, saying the last-minute halt to the execution traumatized Slemmer’s family and rewarded “abusive delaying tactics” by Pike’s attorneys.
Later in the day, the high court cleared the way for the execution. The conservative majority did not explain their order, while three liberal members signed a dissent saying Pike’s claims deserved closer study.
Pike has not denied committing the killings, but her supporters argue the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of serious sexual abuse.
Case reignites debate over juvenile death penalty
As the execution date approaches, the debate over the death penalty for juvenile offenders has resumed.
Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s death sentence was an anomaly because other 18-year-olds in Tennessee have had their death sentences vacated.
After the homicide, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she said she only wanted to fight Slimer but when she couldn’t “put on the brakes” she killed her in a frenzied attack.
“I was an 18-year-old with a mental illness. It took me years to realize the severity of what I had done,” Peck said in a statement.
Victim’s mother says she is awaiting death sentence
Slimer’s mother traveled to Nashville to witness the execution of her daughter’s killer. She told The Associated Press on Saturday that she had waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.
“Every time I think about it, I think about the pain Colleen felt and tried to get up and run,” Mae Martinez told The Associated Press in a phone interview Saturday.
Martinez could not immediately be reached by phone for comment after the execution was halted.
The killing shocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike feared Slimer was trying to steal her boyfriend, so he lured her to a wooded area on Jan. 12, 1995. Pike cut Slimer with a box cutter and beat her with a chunk of asphalt. Parker’s boyfriend Shipp admitted that he carved the pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satan, into her body.
Shipp, who was 17 at the time of the crime, was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.
Executions of women in the United States are rare
Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been executed, accounting for about 1 percent of all executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Following Tuesday’s execution in Florida, Pike will become the 30th person to be executed in the United States this year.
Tennessee announced in 2024 that it would move from a three-drug series used in lethal injections to a single drug, pentobarbital. More than two years ago, the state abruptly halted the execution of Oscar Smith and admitted failing to ensure its lethal injection drugs were properly tested.
Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins (Columbia, South Carolina), Ed White (Detroit), Hallie Golden (Seattle) and Hannah Schoenbaum (Salt Lake City) contributed.
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