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Failed execution of Christa Pike: ruptured vein feared during injection
Christa Pike's failed execution in Tennessee caused a stir far beyond the United States. Now there are new details about how the execution took place. more...
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dpa | During the failed execution of Christa Pike in the US state of Tennessee, employees responsible for the infusion are said to have warned of ruptured veins. The staff tried to create access with around ten needles on both arms, several media reported from statements submitted by the lawyers in court. Despite the complications, Pike was subsequently given both injections of the toxicant.
The search for a vein took almost an hour for Pike, the Guardian quoted a lawyer as saying. Employees repeatedly thought they had hit a vein - only to find out the opposite. One of the needles appeared to be “severely bent” after it was pulled out. Employees repeatedly expressed the suspicion that the veins were damaged.
Finally, they believed they had successfully found an entrance and administered the poison pentobarbital to Pike. When the first injection did not result in death, she was given a second dose as per protocol. “I feel like my arm is going to explode,” Pike reportedly said. “It’s burning.”
When Pike went to the hospital, her arms were swollen and blistered, according to attorneys. After the execution attempt, experts had already suspected that the poison had entered the surrounding tissue and not the bloodstream. That could explain why the 50-year-old was able to survive.
Pike's execution caused a stir because she would have been the first woman to be executed in the US state of Tennessee in more than 200 years. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there is no comparable case known in recent history in the United States in which the execution drugs were administered and the condemned person lived on.
About a week and a half after the execution, Pike was able to leave the hospital - and is now back in the prison where she has been imprisoned for around three decades. Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. She was 18 years old at the time of the crime. Slemmer was tortured over a long period of time in 1995 in a remote area near Knoxville and ultimately killed.