Tennessee officials released emergency calls Monday from the night Christa Pike’s execution failed at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. The first 911 call went out at 9:40 p.m. ET on September 30. Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, was scheduled to become the first woman executed in the state in more than 200 years. After the Supreme Court cleared the procedure, she received two doses of pentobarbital. Witnesses described her making loud snoring noises before medical crews transported her to Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Her attorney, Randy Spivey, said she was unconscious on a ventilator. Doctors believed she was brain dead on October 5. The next morning, she regained consciousness. Pike was released from the hospital Saturday and returned to the Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, back in state custody.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Three decades later, Slemmer’s family is watching a case they thought was over land back in national headlines. The failed procedure has renewed debate over lethal injection protocols and emergency medical response behind prison walls.
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