Overview
- Pike survived a failed execution on Sept. 30 after two doses of pentobarbital were given, was hospitalized and placed on a ventilator for days before regaining consciousness and returning to the prison medical ward.
- In a statement released by her lawyers on Oct. 30, Pike says she endures unrelenting body pain, ongoing difficulty speaking and renewed isolation that echoes years spent in solitary confinement.
- Preliminary accounts and Pike’s attorneys say the execution team had major problems establishing IV access, which likely caused the drug to enter surrounding tissue instead of her bloodstream and produced severe local injury without causing death.
- A Tennessee court has ordered preservation of all evidence from the execution, the state has suspended executions for the rest of the year, and Pike’s lawyers are pressing Governor Bill Lee for commutation to life in prison while he defers to the courts.
- The case is legally novel because Pike appears to be the only person in recent U.S. history to survive drugs administered in an execution, and it has raised urgent questions about training, oversight, clemency and the humane administration of capital punishment.