Tennessee tried to execute Christa Pike, 50, on Wednesday, Sept. 30, for a 1995 murder, and she was still alive afterward. As of Thursday afternoon, Oct. 1, ABC News reported that her attorneys said she was in critical condition at a hospital and receiving life-saving medical care. This explainer sets out the day’s sequence, what the state’s written protocol says, and what is still unknown.
A stay in the morning, vacated by evening
The execution was set for 10 a.m. Central time at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. At about 8:17 a.m., a divided panel of the Sixth Circuit granted a short stay, according to Tennessee’s filing with the Supreme Court. The Nashville Banner put the stay at around 9 a.m. The Associated Press reported the vote was 2-1 and that the delay was needed to consider whether Pike’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered at sentencing.
Tennessee asked the Supreme Court the same day to vacate the stay. The Court granted it. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson dissented. The order is unsigned and gives no reasoning. The Banner reported the stay was vacated around 5:50 p.m. By Plainly Now’s arithmetic, from the filing’s 8:17 a.m. that is roughly nine and a half hours after the stay was issued.
Justice Sotomayor’s dissent said the decision “clears the way for the State to execute Pike before her still-pending legal challenges to her conviction can be properly considered”.
The evening attempt
The Banner reported that witnesses entered the room at 6:26 p.m.; the AP reported that officials raised the curtains at 7:27 p.m. The AP reported that by 8:26 p.m. witnesses said the second dose of pentobarbital had been given. The Banner said the Knoxville Federal Public Defender’s Office confirmed after 8 p.m. that Pike had received both doses but that her heart had not stopped.
The AP reported that Pike was heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at 8:53 p.m. and media witnesses were escorted out. The Banner reported that the curtain was closed at 8:05 p.m. and stayed closed until 8:53 p.m.
What the state said, and what the protocol does not say
The Tennessee Department of Correction issued a statement at 11:15 p.m. It said the department “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol” and that the protocol “does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out this evening.” It added that Pike had been taken to an off-site medical facility.
The AP reported that the protocol calls for a secondary set of drug syringes “if the inmate is not deceased” after the first, but “does not spell out what happens if the subject is alive after the second set.” We did not locate the protocol document itself.
The governor’s order and open questions
On Thursday, Gov. Bill Lee ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred,” according to a statement the AP published. The one remaining scheduled execution “will not take place this year,” the AP reported; the Banner said it was set for Dec. 3.
Lee told reporters, as WPLN reported, “So far as we know, the Department of Correction followed exactly the protocol as outlined … But something didn’t go well right last night, and we need to find out why.”
Several points remain unanswered in the public record:
- Cause. The department says it followed the protocol, and Lee said “so far as we know” it did. No cause has been established.
- Pike’s condition. ABC News’s Thursday account quotes attorney Randy Spivey: “We don’t have a sense of her prognosis”. WPLN reported Lee would not speak to it; we found no state description.
- The review. The statements reviewed here do not name who will conduct it, when it will report or how broad it will be.
Earlier this year, in May, Tennessee called off another execution after executioners could not place an IV, the AP reported.