Botched lethal injection survivor Christa Pike may face the electric chair as Tennessee’s newly elected governor vows to push ahead with executions
A Death Row killer who survived being pumped full of deadly drugs could be strapped into the electric chair after an incoming hardline governor took power. Christa Pike cheated death on September 30 when prison executioners failed to kill her using two doses of the lethal sedative pentobarbital.
The botched procedure erupted into chaos when execution staff spent agonising minutes struggling to find a vein. Witnesses told how the 50-year-old was left loudly snoring and gasping for breath on the gurney before panicking guards scrambled medics to rush her to intensive care.
Pike spent days unconscious on a ventilator with attorneys fearing she was brain dead, only for her to miraculously wake up and speak on October 6.
Her lawyers revealed the execution nightmare left her with mangled arms, pneumonia, a blood clot and mobility issues.
Breaking her silence through her legal team weeks after surviving the death chamber, Pike said: “There hasn’t been a moment since that night when I haven’t been in pain.”
She added that her limbs and throat are still in agony and that she remains barely able to talk. The gruesome cock-up came despite earlier warnings that the execution could fail.
Court filings first uncovered by People magazine revealed Pike’s defence team had sounded the alarm nine months earlier, warning she likely suffered from a rare blood cancer called myeloproliferative disorder.
Lawyers had warned the condition caused sky-high platelet levels and compromised veins, leaving her at severe risk of agonising pulmonary edema – essentially drowning in her own lung fluid – if needles were forced into her arms.
Her fate has now been thrown into fresh turmoil after pro-death penalty Republican Marsha Blackburn romped to victory in Tuesday’s governor race.
Blackburn, who defeated anti-capital punishment Democrat Jerri Green to become Tennessee’s first female governor, is demanding an immediate return to the electric chair.
Fuming over Pike’s survival, Blackburn said: “This situation is tragic. Christa Pike should have been executed long ago.” She added: “Now, this botched process is extending the pain for the family of Colleen Slemmer.”
The incoming state chief demanded a full inquiry and insisted officials “bring back the electric chair and deliver justice for these victims swiftly.”
She also doubled down to the Associated Press, insisting the disaster “should not be grounds to halt carrying out the death penalty.”
Pike was condemned to death after torturing and butchering 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in a horrifying woodland bloodbath near the University of Tennessee campus back in 1995, when the killer was just 18.
She was set to be the state’s first executed female in more than 200 years. While outgoing Governor Bill Lee slapped a freeze on all capital punishment for the rest of the year, he flatly refused to commute Pike’s sentence to life behind bars.
Quizzed on whether the state would make a second bid on her life, Lee said: “I suspect her sentence will be the same as before unless determined otherwise by the courts.”