The lone woman on Tennessee’s death row was still alive after she was administered two lethal injections, her lawyer said in a motion seeking to halt her execution Wednesday night, a stunning development after the Supreme Court had stepped in to allow the state to put her to death.
At 8:26 p.m. local time, witnesses said “executioners had injected both syringes of lethal injection chemicals” and Christa Pike was “still alive and snoring,” her lawyers said in a federal court filing.
They said Pike “has not lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat” and that curtains to the death chamber “have gone down twice.”
What is the medical condition and went does it prevent the legal drugs from working?
She has a condition that causes blood clotting, some kind of thrombosis. Her lawyers told the courts that it could cause the injections to fail.
Other commenter is also correct. She was raped multiple times, and asked for a hanging instead of an injection because 1, she believes a botched hanging would be less awful a way to die than a botched lethal injection, and 2, because being strapped to a gurney (effectively tied to a bed) and surrounded by men and watched by strangers would be incredibly psychologically painful to her. The woman declined a last meal before they did this, id imagine she was too distraught to eat.
Oh wow.
Thanks for the write up, however depressing
Everything I have read says that she wanted another method of execution because strapping her to a guerney will trigger a PTSD episode.
That, yes. But also she has a blood clotting condition that her and her lawyers believed would make the injections fail to work correctly.
And we can see that’s what happened. Whether it’s because of the blood clots or not, I can’t say. But it sounds like they were spot on.