NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Christa Pike was scheduled to be executed. But after two injections, she kept breathing. She made snoring sounds, she talked, she said her arm was hurting.
Pike, sentenced to die for torturing and killing 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995, said as her scheduled lethal injection began that she was at peace.
Strapped to a gurney around 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Pike, who was allowed to give a final statement, said she was leaving the world with love.
“I’m ready to be free,” she said. This is a happy day.”
Leaving prison in an ambulance, not a hearse
Pike, now 50, was 18 when she committed the murder and would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
But instead she survived two doses of the pentobarbital meant to kill her. She left the prison in an ambulance instead of a hearse.
The Associated Press was among those who witnessed her failed execution. She was already strapped to the gurney, with IV inserted in her arm, when prison officials raised the curtain to the execution room at 7:27 p.m.
Her spiritual adviser was standing beside the gurney near her head. He spoke to her. They sang a song. The lyrics were not audible, but included repeating the phrase — "I love you.” The spiritual adviser stroked her forehead.
Minutes ticked by. She raised her head and looked around; she smiled. Then she said her arm was hurting and asked a prison official in the room if it was supposed to feel that way.
Ten minutes in, at 7:37 p.m., she sighed, the IV in her arm fed from a control room adjacent to the death chamber, separated by a ledge. At 7:41 p.m., a rock or paper weight about the size of a golf ball was placed on the ledge. Prison officials have not confirmed what it means, but its placement appeared to coincide with a direction in the protocol that says after the drugs are administered, a five-minute countdown begins until the curtain is closed.
At 7:46 p.m., officials closed the curtain, blocking the witnesses’ view of the death chamber. Pike’s spiritual adviser left the chamber and sat briefly with her attorney in the media witness room.
The curtain rose again three minutes later. The Tennessee lethal injection protocol calls for a second round of pentobarbital if the inmate is not deceased after the first round.
An hour-plus of what sounded like snoring
Her spiritual adviser returned to the chamber and stood beside Pike with his hands folded. Pike appeared to begin to lose consciousness at some point and started making a sound like snoring. She continued to do so for the next hour, a sign that she was alive long after she was expected to be dead.
Her head raised slightly off the gurney and turned to the side at about 7:56 p.m. She kept breathing.
Officials closed the curtain again at 8:06 p.m.
For the next 40 minutes, Pike could be heard from behind the curtain. She sounded like she was snoring, a rhythmic, regular breathing pattern.
Inside the prison, Pike's attorney, Randy Spivey, later told the media that at about 8:22 p.m. he demanded access to a telephone to contact other lawyers on the team. He said he demanded the execution be halted and that life-saving medical care be given to Pike. He said he received confirmation at about 8:50 p.m. that an ambulance was on the way.
At 8:53 p.m., an announcement came: “Will witnesses please exit the area.” The media was escorted out, and a prison spokesperson said she had no information to provide about what had happened.
Fire trucks and ambulances arrived in front of the prison at around 9:14 p.m. Pike’s attorneys later issued a statement that she had been taken to a hospital and was being treated, though they did not know the specifics of her condition. On Thursday afternoon, they said she was in critical condition receiving medical care.
Governor orders a review
The Tennessee Department of Correction issued a statement saying the department followed protocol.
“The lethal injection chemical in the protocol has consistently been effective, and the protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out this evening,” the agency wrote. “Christa Pike has been transported to an off-site medical facility.”
The agency has not said what went wrong. It was the second time this year that Tennessee has been unable to complete an execution, though in the other case, officials couldn’t find a suitable vein for an IV line so the drugs weren’t administered.
Gov. Bill Lee ordered a review and postponed another execution scheduled for later this year, calling what happened in the death chamber “deeply disturbing.”
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, had traveled to Nashville to see the sentence carried out.
"I didn’t get justice for my daughter,” Martinez told the AP by telephone.
“I watched the whole thing. She was awake," Martinez said. "She was moving her head, moving her feet. She was trying to sit up. Didn’t work the first time they gave her a shot. It didn’t work the second time so she’s in the hospital and alive.”
“This isn’t justice for Colleen.”