Confused 911 call recordings released after botched execution of death row inmate Christa Pike
US officials have released the recordings of 911 calls made following the botched execution of death row inmate Christa Pike, who survived two doses of lethal injection.
Pike, 50, is the first person in history to survive a double lethal injection, after she was given the drug pentobarbital during an execution attempt in Tennessee on September 30.
Christa Pike, 50, survived a double lethal injection in Tennessee on September 30. AP
She was hospitalised in a critical condition and required a ventilator before she was later discharged and moved back to a women’s prison, where Pike has been housed for the past 30 years over the 1995 beating and stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer.
Call recordings made following Pike’s unlikely survival have been released by Metro Nashville’s Emergency Communications Centre, which showed a 911 call was made at 8.40pm local time, a little over an hour after Pike’s attempted execution began.
“We’ve been carrying out an execution tonight … we’re calling for an ambulance,” an unidentified caller is heard saying.
“The person is not yet deceased,” the caller added.
The unnamed prison official also described Pike’s breathing as “very laboured”.
However, at least 30 minutes elapsed before first responders could confirm the call was legitimate, which required a code.
“Per supervisors here at the DEC [Department of Emergency Communications] we have been informed it is a false call,” a dispatcher said at 9.03pm.
“There is no medical assistance needed at Riverbend Prison.”
It took several more minutes before the prison’s Central Control verified the call’s legitimacy and allowed first responders into the prison at 9.11pm.
An ambulance then took Pike to a hospital.
The Death Penalty Information Centre said Pike is the first person to survive after receiving lethal injection drugs during an execution.
Pike, sentenced to death for a 1995 murder, awoke in hospital after the botched execution attempt. CNN
The Tennessee Department of Correction has not said what went wrong in the execution.
Medical and lethal injection experts have focused on whether a problem with the IV line caused the drug to pool in her tissue instead of entering her bloodstream.
Pike’s attorneys wrote in a court filing that “apparently at no point did any member of the execution team realise that the IV lines were not correctly placed.”
Pike, then aged 19, cries after being sentenced to death in 1996. WBIR-TV via AP
Her legal team has also asked Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to commute her sentence to life imprisonment.
“She has satisfied this very, very high standard for cruel and unusual punishment,” said Deborah Denno, a Fordham Law professor who has studied execution methods for 36 years.
The failed execution brought renewed scrutiny to how Tennessee carries out death sentences.
Lee has since postponed the state’s only other scheduled execution this year and ordered a review of what went wrong.
The state’s prison chief resigned in the wake of the failed execution.
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