Tennessee’s bungled attempt to execute Christa Pike was not the first time a state has failed to carry out a lethal injection over problems in the death chamber.
Pike, 50, has regained consciousness and is speaking a week after Tennessee gave her two lethal doses of pentobarbital. Outgoing Republican Gov. Bill Lee has ordered a review into what went wrong and the state has not said whether they will again try executing her, which experts say could wade into uncharted legal waters.
Pike, who was sentenced to die for torturing and killing 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995, is one of at least eight condemned inmates in the U.S. who left their state’s execution chamber still alive because of problems carrying out the punishment, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Pike is the only one who was actually administered lethal drugs before the process was halted, according to the organization.
Not all have faced execution a second time. Three of the inmates would die years later in prison, two remain alive and two were executed after another attempt.
Lethal injection failures in Ohio