Christa Pike is still alive after two rounds of lethal injection failed to kill her, making her the first person in history to survive that death-penalty method.
The 50-year-old Tennessee death-row inmate, who was slated to become the first woman executed by the state in 200 years, was jabbed with at least seven needles during Wednesday night’s botched procedure — with one needle bending when it came out, her lawyers claim. Medical staff struggled for roughly an hour and a half to carry out the execution as Pike herself tried to help them locate a suitable vein.
Pike had foreseen exactly this kind of ordeal. As her execution date approached, she pleaded for a hanging instead, arguing that blown veins in her arms would make lethal injection extraordinarily excruciating. Her attorneys and supporters had petitioned for a stay all the way to the Supreme Court at the last minute.
The lethal injection attempt began after Pike gave her final statement at 7:27 p.m., telling witnesses she was “gonna go out with love” and that she was “ready to go.” What followed was a prolonged failure that left veteran journalist Will Puckett, a reporter for WVLT News in Knoxville, “at a loss for words.”
“As we’re sitting in this room, and it’s now taking nearly an hour for them to open the curtain from the time that we’re sat, one of my colleagues in there, who had seen her fair share of executions, who was kind enough to kind of walk me through the process, leaned over and said, ‘It should not be taking this long for the curtains to open. Something’s going wrong,'” Puckett said.
The curtain was first closed at 7:46 p.m. And reopened briefly at 7:49 p.m. Before being shut again at 8:05 p.m., according to Puckett’s notes. Witnesses could hear what was happening but could not see it. The lethal injection attempt continued until 8:53 p.m.
“That should have been more than enough,” Puckett said of the two doses of pentobarbital administered to Pike, noting that just one dose “should be enough to kill a fully grown human.”
Rather than dying, Pike started snoring deeply while on the gurney, with her legs and feet moving back and forth. The Emmy Award-winning anchor said the media was left completely in the dark about the procedure’s details.
“The point of us being in there, or for observers, [is] to say, ‘Yep, the state did what it’s supposed to,’ but because they pulled the curtain, we cannot say that,” he said.
Puckett repeatedly pressed the Tennessee Department of Correction’s communications director for answers. “The communications director was like, ‘I don’t know anything. I can’t get you an answer. You’re seeing and hearing what I’m seeing and hearing,'” he said.
Pike’s survival has drawn comment from the highest levels of government. President Trump called the botched execution an “interesting situation” but refused to weigh in on next steps, saying that was up to Tennessee. “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,” he told reporters traveling with him to Texas. He also expressed disbelief: “How does that happen? Should be easy to do. It shouldn’t be very difficult.”
The failed execution has left the mother of Pike’s victim, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, furious. Pike was convicted of brutally bludgeoning Slemmer to death and hacking her body with a box cutter in 1995, when both were teens. She carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest and kept a piece of her skull as a “keepsake” before confessing the murder to her mother.
A 1998 “Fox Files” profile previewed by The Post’s Michael Starr captured Pike’s chilling demeanor three years after the murder. “I think what she feels bad about is her own situation,” producer Cynthia Fagen said after interviewing Pike in her prison cell outside Nashville, where she spent 23 hours a day in isolation. “If she could do it all over again, she wouldn’t have killed that girl — if only because she’s been inconvenienced by the four walls [of her cell].” Fagen also noted Pike’s bizarre fixation on her appearance: “The greatest terror in her life was the electric chair — but only because her pride and joy is her hair, and you can see how she primps for the cameras.”
Pike now remains in critical condition at a nearby hospital. Tennessee’s governor has ordered a comprehensive review of the failed execution.