Christa Pike’s family was “excited” when her execution was bungled even though the convicted murderer was “ready to go,” according to her aunt.
Pike, 50, was set to become the first woman put to death in Tennessee for over 200 years on Sept. 30 but was instead rushed to hospital after surviving two lethal injections.
“When they said she’s still breathing, we got excited thinking that she was going to make it,’ Pike’s aunt, Carrie Ross, told the Daily Mail.
Christa Pike’s family was “excited” when her execution was bungled even though the convicted murderer was “ready to go,” according to her aunt. Tennessee Dept of Corrections/UPI/Shutterstock
Pike’s execution had originally been due to take place at 10 a.m., but with just an hour to go, the Court of Appeals granted a stay which was lifted in the evening by the US Supreme Court.
“She didn’t want the stay,” Ross told the outlet. “She was ready to go. She was at peace. She had accepted that whatever happened was not in her control. It was in God’s control.”
Pike was sentenced to death for the sadistic torture and murder of her 19-year-old Job Corps classmate Colleen Slemmer in Jan. 1995, when she was 18.
Witnesses to the bungled execution described how Pike could be heard snoring after receiving the two doses of pentobarbital before she was rushed to hospital in an ambulance.
Here’s the latest on the botched execution of Tennessee murderer Christa Pike:
She remained unconscious and in a critical state, with her lawyers believing Monday that she was brain dead and would be taken off life support the following day.
But in a shocking turn of events, she woke up on Tuesday and is now talking and walking, her lawyer said.
Pike, 50, was set to become the first woman put to death in Tennessee for over 200 years on Sept. 30 but was instead rushed to hospital after two lethal injections. USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
It makes her the first death row inmate ever believed to have survived lethal injection in the US.
Pike’s legal team said she was given two doses of pentobarbital using at least 7 needles, one of which allegedly came out of her arm bent at a 90-degree angle.
She suffered a blood clot in her arm, has pneumonia and can’t eat following her botched execution, her attorney Randy Spivey told a press conference Wednesday.
Pike’s legal team said she was given two doses of pentobarbital using at least 7 needles, one of which allegedly came out of her arm bent at a 90-degree angle. USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
Her federal defense lawyer Stephen Ferrell also told the BBC that Pike’s arms are “very injured and she’s not able to use them very much.”
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Pike’s legal team has asked Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to commute her sentence, saying she has “endured punishment greater than any other person in the history of the American death penalty.”