Donald Trump criticized Tennessee officials after the failed execution of death row inmate Christa Pike, who survived an attempt to kill her with lethal drugs on Wednesday.
Pike, 50, was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of her classmate, Colleen Slemmer. Late Wednesday, officials administered four syringes of pentobarbital at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee.
Speaking with reporters in Texas, the president appeared stunned that the execution had failed.
‘How does that happen?’ Trump asked. ‘Should be easy to do. It shouldn’t be very difficult.’
Trump stopped short of recommending what Tennessee should do next, though he acknowledged that Pike’s case was extraordinary.
‘That was an interesting situation, but you’re going to have to speak to Tennessee about it. Whether or not they’re going to go forward,’ he said.
Trump appeared alongside Republican Ronny Jackson, a former White House physician, and suggested Jackson might be better positioned to assess why the procedure went wrong.
Pike was reportedly still alive and snoring loudly after the attempted lethal injection. She was then taken by ambulance to a hospital.
Donald Trump criticized those involved in the failed execution of convicted killer Christa Pike after she survived two doses of lethal injection Wednesday
Pike (pictured) was given two syringes of pentobarbital at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee, late Wednesday
She remains in the hospital, while her attorneys say they have received no information about her medical condition and have not been provided with any updates.
Pike’s case is Tennessee’s second botched execution this year. Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, described it as the most serious failure of its kind in modern history.
‘This event is the worst we’ve seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era,’ Maher told the New York Times. ‘There is no precedent.’
Seven other death row prisoners have survived when execution teams were unable to find a vein for the lethal injection. However, Maher said no one had previously remained alive after receiving the drugs used in such procedures.
She called Pike’s experience ‘singular and unparalleled.’
At 7.27pm, officials opened the curtains to the execution chamber, revealing Pike strapped to a gurney.
‘I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is in love,’ Pike said in what were intended to be her final words. She also said she was at peace.
Yet Pike remained conscious. At one point, she lifted her head and asked prison officials whether her arm was supposed to feel the way it did. It was unclear what sensation she meant.
A picture taken on March 30, 1996 shows Christa Pike being escorted from Knox County Criminal Court in Knoxville, Tennessee, US, after being sentenced to death for the murder of Colleen Slemmer
Christa Pike, pictured in court in August, endured what a death penalty expert called the worst botched execution after surviving two doses of lethal injection
By 8.26pm, execution witnesses reported that the second dose of pentobarbital had been administered.
Pike continued to be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at 8.53pm. Witnesses were then escorted out of the area.
Lawyers for Pike filed an emergency motion late Wednesday to the Tennessee Supreme Court seeking to immediately halt and stay the execution, saying she was in ‘unnecessary agony’ and it was violating her right to be executed free of cruel and unusual punishment.
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They also filed motions in the Sixth Circuit court and a district court.
The Tennessee Department of Correction has said in a statement that it ‘followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.’
The state’s execution protocol calls for a secondary set of drug syringes to be administered ‘if the inmate is not deceased’ after the first set. It does not spell out what happens if the subject is alive after the second set.
This was the second time this year that Tennessee has been unable to carry out an execution.
In May state officials called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after executioners tried and failed for over an hour to place an IV to administer pentobarbital.
Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, has claimed Pike’s botched execution is the worst in modern history. She said that what Pike experienced is ‘singular and unparalleled’
Witness John North with WBIR recounts the planned execution of Christa Pike at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville
Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of the fatal stabbing and beating in 1995 of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville.
The case garnered widespread attention in part because of a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer’s body, and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the ‘satanic panic’ of the 1980s and 1990s.
Pike was initially scheduled to be put to death Wednesday morning, and witnesses had gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the 6th Circuit US Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay.
That court said a delay was needed to consider whether Pike’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered at her sentencing.
The attorney general’s office appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that halting the execution at the last moment traumatized Slemmer’s family and rewarded ‘abusive delay tactics’ by Pike’s attorneys.
Later in the day, the high court cleared the way for the execution to proceed. The conservative majority did not explain their order, while the three liberal members signed a dissent that said Pike’s claims deserved a closer look.
Pike did not deny killing Slemmer, but her supporters argued that the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse.
After the murder, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she said she only wanted to fight Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied attack when she couldn’t ‘put the brakes on.’
Tadaryl Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, was 17 when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death
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‘I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done,’ Pike said in a statement.
The killing rocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on January 12, 1995.
Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Tadaryl Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, admitted that he carved the pentagram into her body.
Shipp was 17 when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.
Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the US this year after Florida carried out an execution on Tuesday.
