What’s next for Christa Pike after surviving lethal injection

Dipti Vaidya/Imagn/Reuters

Christa Pike survived Tennessee’s attempt to execute her via lethal injection on Wednesday, but her medical and legal future remain remarkably unclear.

Pike is in critical condition and receiving life-saving medical care after being injected with two ostensibly fatal doses of pentobarbital, her attorneys said Thursday. They declined to offer further details on her health.

Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, was set to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years. Now, her legal case will be at a standstill.

Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, announced he would call off the state’s last remaining execution this year while a third-party review takes place to “determine what exactly occurred” in Pike’s case, according to The Associated Press. CNN has reached out to the governor’s office for comment.

“The Governor has appropriately called for an investigation,” the office of Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said in a statement. “We need to know what happened.”

Christa Pike survived an execution. What went wrong?

The moratorium is part of the stop-and-start use of executions in Tennessee the last few years. Lee similarly paused executions in 2022 for a review, and earlier this year the state failed to carry out a lethal injection on a death row inmate after struggling to find a vein.

Pike was initially scheduled to be executed on Wednesday morning, but last-minute legal appeals delayed the execution to later in the day .

The execution protocol began in the early evening, and she gave her last words at 7:26 p.m., according to media witnesses. Yet after two doses of the drug cocktail, she was snoring and appeared to be alive, the witnesses said.

“None of it was normal,” said Catherine Sweeney, a reporter for WPLN. “I covered all the executions last year, and most of the ones this year. We haven’t seen anything like it. It went really poorly.”

The Tennessee Department of Correction said it acted according to its protocol throughout the failed execution.

“The Tennessee Department of Correction followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office,” the department said in a statement Wednesday. “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.”

Randy Spivey, one of Pike’s attorneys, said the governor’s call for a review of the execution protocol doesn’t go far enough. He called for Lee to commute her sentence, saying she had endured punishment “greater than any other person in the history of the American death penalty.”

The attorneys said they had warned the court beforehand that Pike’s vein issues would make it difficult to carry out the lethal injection.

“We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms. Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy,” attorneys Spivey and Kelly Gleason said in a statement.

But what happened Wednesday was essentially her “biggest fear,” attorney Stephen Ferrell said.

“It was not a fear of dying. It was a fear of prolonged, painful, traumatic death. That’s what happened, minus the death,” he said.

While it’s not uncommon to have a “botched” execution – when something differs from official protocol – it’s exceedingly rare for an execution to simply fail, said Austin Sarat, an Amherst College professor and author of several books on the death penalty and lethal injection.

“Those cases where people survive an execution create a real dilemma for the legal system. Now what?” he said.

Sarat said there is some legal precedent for inmates who survived an execution being put to death again.

In a case 80 years ago, 16-year-old Willie Francis survived an execution via the electric chair in Louisiana due to a malfunction. He appealed his case to the US Supreme Court, saying a second execution would violate the double jeopardy clause of the Constitution and the protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

The Court rejected his appeal, and he died in a second electric chair execution.

Similarly, in a 2009 case , Ohio personnel attempted to execute Romell Broom by lethal injection, but they were unable to access a vein and establish an IV line. Afterward, he argued that a second execution attempt would violate the double jeopardy clause and protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled against him in 2016, saying that setting the IV line was only a “preliminary step” to an execution, so a second execution attempt would not be considered a violation of the double jeopardy clause.

Broom ultimately died of Covid-19 in 2020 while still on death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center .

Still, Pike’s case is unique because the lethal drugs actually entered her system, Sarat said.

“So we’re in kind of unprecedented territory with Pike in the sense of she survived her execution,” he said.

CNN’s Dakin Andone and Meg Tirrell contributed to this report.

迪普蒂·瓦伊迪亚/伊玛格恩/路透社

克丽斯塔·派克在周三田纳西州试图通过注射死刑处决她时幸存了下来，但她的医疗和法律前景仍然非常不明朗。

派克的律师周四表示，派克目前情况危急，正在接受抢救治疗。此前，她被注射了两剂看似致命的戊巴比妥钠。律师拒绝透露更多关于她健康状况的细节。

派克因1995年谋杀19岁的科琳·斯莱默而被判处死刑，她原本将成为田纳西州200年来第一个被执行死刑的女性。如今，她的法律案件将陷入僵局。

据美联社报道，共和党籍州长比尔·李宣布，在第三方审查派克案“究竟发生了什么”期间，他将暂停该州今年最后一项死刑执行。CNN已联系州长办公室寻求置评。

田纳西州总检察长乔纳森·斯克梅蒂的办公室在一份声明中表示：“州长要求展开调查是恰当的。我们需要知道究竟发生了什么。”

克丽斯塔·派克侥幸逃过了一次死刑。究竟出了什么问题？

暂停执行死刑是田纳西州过去几年断断续续执行死刑的一部分。李州长也曾在2022年暂停执行死刑进行审查，而今年早些时候，该州在未能找到静脉的情况下，未能对一名死刑犯执行注射死刑。

派克原定于周三上午被执行死刑，但最后一刻的法律上诉将执行时间推迟到当天晚些时候。

行刑程序于傍晚开始，据媒体目击者称，她于晚上7点26分发表了遗言。然而，目击者表示，在注射了两剂药物后，她开始打鼾，看起来还活着。

“这一切都不正常，”WPLN电视台记者凯瑟琳·斯威尼说。“我报道了去年所有的死刑执行，以及今年的大部分。我们从未见过这样的情况。执行得非常糟糕。”

田纳西州惩教部门表示，在整个死刑执行失败的过程中，他们始终按照既定程序行事。

田纳西州惩教署周三在一份声明中表示：“该署严格遵循了经州检察长办公室批准的、合法且既定的死刑执行程序。该程序中使用的注射死刑药物一直有效，且程序不允许在今晚执行的程序之外增加任何其他步骤。”

派克的律师之一兰迪·斯派维表示，州长要求审查死刑执行程序的举措远远不够。他呼吁减免李的刑罚，称她所遭受的惩罚“比美国死刑史上任何人都更加沉重”。

律师们表示，他们事先已警告法庭，派克的静脉问题将使执行注射死刑变得困难。

“我们并不乐于证明自己是对的，但派克女士提出的担忧最终被证实是正确的：静脉穿刺困难、静脉破裂、戊巴比妥降解、一旦出现意外情况，没有紧急医疗救助，所有这一切都发生在一个仍然秘而不宣的方案之下，”律师斯派维和凯利·格里森在一份声明中表示。

但律师斯蒂芬·费雷尔表示，周三发生的事情基本上是她“最害怕的事情”。

“那不是对死亡的恐惧，而是对漫长、痛苦、创伤性死亡的恐惧。事情就是这样发生的，只是没有真的死亡，”他说。

阿默斯特学院教授、著有多本关于死刑和注射死刑书籍的奥斯汀·萨拉特表示，虽然执行死刑出现“失误”（即与官方程序不符）的情况并不少见，但执行死刑完全失败的情况极其罕见。

他说：“那些死刑执行后幸存下来的人，给法律体系带来了真正的难题。接下来该怎么办？”

萨拉特表示，对于曾被执行死刑但幸存下来的囚犯，再次执行死刑是有一些法律先例的。

80年前，16岁的威利·弗朗西斯在路易斯安那州被执行电椅死刑时，因电椅故障而幸免于难。他向美国最高法院提起上诉，称再次执行死刑将违反宪法中的“禁止双重危险”条款以及禁止残酷和非常规惩罚的规定。

法院驳回了他的上诉，他被第二次送上电椅处死。

同样，在2009年的一起案件中，俄亥俄州的工作人员试图以注射死刑的方式处决罗梅尔·布鲁姆，但他们未能找到静脉并建立静脉输液管。事后，他辩称第二次执行死刑将违反双重危险条款以及禁止残酷和非常规惩罚的规定。

2016 年，俄亥俄州最高法院驳回了他的上诉，称设置静脉输液管只是执行死刑的“初步步骤”，因此第二次执行死刑不构成违反双重危险条款。

据死刑信息中心称，布鲁姆最终于 2020 年死于新冠肺炎，当时他仍在死囚牢房中。

萨拉特说，不过，派克的案例很特殊，因为致命药物确实进入了她的体内。

“所以，就派克而言，我们现在的情况有点前所未有，因为她在被执行死刑后活了下来，”他说。

CNN的达金·安多内和梅格·蒂雷尔对本报道亦有贡献。