Tennessee inmate Christa Pike survives two lethal injections, execution halted
Christa Pike, on death row for 30 years, stayed alive after two lethal injections in Tennessee and is under emergency hospital treatment, with her execution halted for now.
An attempt to execute Christa Pike, who has spent 30 years on death row in the US state of Tennessee for murder, has failed. Prison authorities gave her two lethal injections, yet she did not die.
Her sentence has been put on hold for now, and she is undergoing emergency treatment in hospital.
According to official information, Pike, 50, was convicted in 1996 of brutally murdering a classmate and was sentenced to death. A long legal battle followed and several petitions were rejected. The US Supreme Court then upheld her death sentence for the last time.
The execution process began at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Tennessee. A first injection of a toxic chemical was given, then a second. But her heart kept beating after two doses. Doctors and officials present were stunned, as she had only lost consciousness and begun to snore.
As soon as it became clear that she had not died and her heart was beating, her legal team rushed to court and challenged the procedure. The lawyers argued that the process was extremely cruel and had failed, and that the prisoner was being made to suffer inhuman pain. Given the gravity of the situation, prison authorities stopped the procedure immediately and admitted Pike by ambulance to a nearby hospital. Her condition is reported to be worrying.
The case goes beyond one murder sentence. It stems from a terrible crime in 1995. Pike was just 18 then. Along with her then boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, she brutally murdered 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer at a job training camp. She was sentenced to death in 1996 at the age of just 20, and became one of the youngest women in the US to receive the sentence.
The event is significant in Tennessee's history because the state last put a woman to death in 1819, 207 years ago. Since then, no woman prisoner has been put to death there by lethal injection or hanging. Had Pike died in this process, she would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in 207 years.
The failed procedure has now set off a sharp debate in the US over methods of execution. The Tennessee governor, treating the matter seriously, has ordered a temporary halt to the process for all death sentences in the state. From social media to the courts, there is lively discussion on whether, under American law, a prisoner can be sentenced to death again, or whether her sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment because of the inhuman suffering.
