Donald Trump has questioned how Tennessee officials allowed a lethal injection to fail after death row inmate Christa Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital during an attempted execution in Nashville.
Pike, 50, remained alive after being administered the drugs at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution on Wednesday night and was taken to hospital by ambulance. Her legal team said they had not been told about her condition.
Speaking to reporters in Texas, Mr Trump said: “How does that happen? Should be easy to do. It shouldn’t be very difficult.”
The President did not suggest what Tennessee should do next, saying: “That was an interesting situation, but you’re going to have to speak to Tennessee about it. Whether or not they’re going to go forward.”
Christa Pike execution described as unprecedented
Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre, described the incident as the worst botched execution in modern history.
“This event is the worst we’ve seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era,” she said. “There is no precedent.”
Ms Maher said seven other death row inmates had survived when execution teams failed to access a vein, but no one had previously remained alive after receiving the drugs used in a lethal injection. She described Pike’s experience as “singular and unparalleled”.
The execution chamber curtains were opened at 7.27pm, showing Pike strapped to a gurney. In her final statement, she said: “I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is in love.”
She remained awake during the procedure and at one point raised her head to ask prison officials whether her arm was meant to feel the way it did. Witnesses later reported that a second dose had been administered by 8.26pm, while Pike could still be heard snoring until the microphone was switched off at 8.53pm.
Lawyers representing Pike filed an emergency motion with the Tennessee Supreme Court, arguing that she was experiencing “unnecessary agony” and that the procedure violated her right to be executed without cruel and unusual punishment. They also filed motions in the Sixth Circuit and a district court.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said it had “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office”. The protocol provides for a second set of drug syringes if an inmate is not dead after the first, but does not specify what should happen if the person remains alive after the second set.
The incident was the second failed execution in Tennessee this year. In May, officials abandoned the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers after spending more than an hour unsuccessfully attempting to place an intravenous line.
Pike was convicted of 1995 murder
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a job training facility in Knoxville. Pike and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, were convicted over the fatal stabbing and beating.
Prosecutors said Pike lured Slemmer into a wooded area because she feared that Slemmer was trying to take her boyfriend. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large piece of asphalt, while Shipp admitted carving a pentagram into the victim’s body.
Shipp, who was 17 at the time, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one of the pair sentenced to death.
Pike did not deny killing Slemmer, but her supporters argued that her age, mental illness and allegations of severe sexual abuse should have been taken into account. She was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Her execution had initially been scheduled for Wednesday morning, but the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay to consider whether her allegations of childhood sexual abuse had been fully examined at sentencing. The US Supreme Court later allowed the execution to proceed, although three liberal justices dissented.
