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Tennessee cancels the rest of this year's executions after Christa Pike survives two pentobarbital doses
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee canceled the state's remaining executions this year after Christa Pike survived both 50-milliliter syringes of pentobarbital. The outside review he ordered now has to account for the state's second failed execution of the year.
The Investor · Invest desk
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What happened
- Pike kept breathing after both doses and was moved from the execution chamber to an outside medical facility.
- On the day of the execution the Supreme Court overturned a federal appeals court's stay before 6 p.m., gave no reasons, and drew dissents from three liberal justices.
- Lee had denied Pike's clemency request earlier that week, and Randy Spivey has since urged him to scrap her death sentence.
- Pike was 18 in January 1995 when she and accomplices killed Colleen Slemmer, 19, near the University of Tennessee's agricultural campus.
- She is the first woman in Tennessee to face execution in at least 200 years.
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Why it matters
- constraint Tennessee cannot schedule another execution under the current text until it answers the case Pike created.
- decision Lee now has to rule on Pike's sentence a second time, with her alive in hospital care.
- precedent Whatever step Tennessee writes for an inmate who survives the full dose will be drafted with no earlier case to copy, since Maher says Pike is the first to survive after the drugs were given.
Tennessee's protocol has two steps. If the first syringe of pentobarbital does not kill, staff give the second; for an inmate who survives the second, the text sets out no procedure at all [4]. Pike received both, 100 milliliters in all [1], and the Department of Correction said its current rules allow no further action [5].
The department also said it followed every approved procedure [5]. Taken at its word, that puts the failure in the written protocol or in the drug, since the team did what the text told it to do. Pike's lawyers said in an emergency federal motion that she never lost consciousness and that her heart kept beating, and, citing witnesses, that she was snoring while still alive [6]. Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said executions have been called off before when staff could not establish intravenous access, but that Pike is the first inmate to survive after the drugs were administered [7].
Tennessee has now failed at two different points in the same procedure within 132 days [2]. On May 21 the state called off Tony Carruthers' execution before any drug was given [8]. Medical staff could not secure the backup IV line the protocol requires, and an attempt at a central line also failed [8]. On Sept. 30 the full dose went in and the inmate lived [2]. A review that studies only the pentobarbital would miss May, and one that studies only vein access would miss September.
The review Lee ordered [3] could reach one of three findings. It could find a fault in the pentobarbital (its strength, or how it was stored), and Tennessee's problem becomes one of supply. It could find a fault in how the line was placed, and September ties back to May. Or it could find that both doses went in as written and recommend only the missing third step. The record does not include the drug's concentration, its supplier, any testing record, or how many scheduled executions the cancellation removes.
I think the pause is shorter than it sounds. Lee's order covers the remaining executions this year [3], and the year had 92 days left after the Sept. 30 attempt [3]. On this record the state is not dropping pentobarbital or lethal injection; it has stopped the calendar pending a review [3]. Pike herself had earlier asked to be executed by firing squad [11]. The counter-case is a finding against the drug. Tennessee would then need a new source or a new method, and a year-end date would not hold. An order extending the cancellation into next year, or a review that faults the pentobarbital, would prove this view wrong.
"What we have been told is that she is in critical condition, receiving life-saving care," Randy Spivey said at a virtual news conference on Thursday, declining to give further details [9].
What to watch
- Whether the review's findings are published and name the pentobarbital's source, strength or testing. That would move the question from the protocol text to the drug supply.
- Whether Lee extends the cancellation past Dec. 31 or Tennessee sets new execution dates for next year before the review reports.
- Lee's response to the renewed plea to scrap Pike's sentence, and how the federal court handles her lawyers' emergency motion.