Witnesses to Christa Pike's botched execution describe chaotic scenes inside chamber as details emerge
Witnesses who were present for Christa Pike's execution attempt have recounted what should have been her final moments.
Dramatic scenes unfolded in Tennessee yesterday (September 30) after death row inmate Pike survived having two syringes of pentobarbital.
Pike had spent 30 years of death row and her legal team fought tooth and nail to have her execution stopped. They briefly succeeded when it was halted just an hour before it was set to take place, but the Supreme Court went on to order for the execution to go ahead as planned.
She went on to be administered two doses of pentobarbital, but Pike survived. She's now in hospital receiving life-saving measures, according to her attorneys.
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It's currently unclear why Pike did not die from the two lethal doses. Gov. Bill Lee has ordered a probe into the matter.
'None of it was normal'
After the chaos, members of the media who witnessed the botched execution shared their accounts of what happened.
WPLN reporter Catherine Sweeney shared: "They went through two rounds and she was still breathing at the end. It was very ragged. She lifted her head up and she was looking around at one point.
"She said that there was a spot burning and hurting and asked if that was normal. None of it was normal."
WKRN anchor Tori Gessner went on to share her account as well. "When the curtains were open she was kind of inconsistently going in and out of snores and silence," she said, as per CNN.
"When the curtains closed one final time at 8:05pm we could consistently hear her snoring, and it kind of developed into a snore/squeak. Even at 8:53pm when the microphone was cut off, we could still hear snoring."
After this point, witnesses were asked to leave the gallery.
'There are no other words'
Another witness, local TV producer John North, had questions about what they had seen.
"We have a lot of questions about what we saw and what we did not see, because there were moments when the blinds were down for us, and there were moments when the blinds were up for us," he said in a report post execution-gone-wrong, per NBC News.
"It appears that this did not go like they thought it was supposed to go, but we don’t know that.
"When we left the building, so far as we knew, she was probably still alive — you just saw the emergency vehicles pull up. We don’t know her status."
Abraham Bonowitz, Co-Founder of Death Penalty Action, has called the whole thing an 'outrage'. In a statement to UNILAD, he said of Pike's failed execution: "The incompetence of the Tennessee DOC sets the bar at the lowest level tonight. There are no other words. This is an outrage. How do they sleep at night?"
While it clearly went very wrong, a spokesperson for The Tennessee Department of Correction insists that they 'followed every step of the State's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General's Office'.
Department spokesperson Dorinda Carter added: "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. Christa Pike has been transported to an off-site medical facility."
Niamh Shackleton