Christa Pike, who has regained consciousness and is speaking a week Tennessee failed to execute her, is believed to be the only person to survive after receiving lethal injection drugs during an execution. But Pike is not the first inmate to survive a botched execution attempt.
There have been dozens of botched executions before Pike, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, and seven cases in recent decades where executioners failed to kill someone with their intended method. Three out of the seven inmates of documented failed executions died years later in prison, due to cancer or illness like COVID-19. Two were executed after their failed execution with a different method, and two remain alive and on death row.
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Tennessee’s bungled attempt to execute Christa Pike was not the first time a state has failed to carry out a lethal injection over problems in the death chamber.
Pike, 50, has regained consciousness and is speaking a week after Tennessee gave her two lethal doses of pentobarbital. Outgoing Republican Gov. Bill Lee has ordered a review into what went wrong and the state has not said whether they will again try executing her, which experts say could wade into uncharted legal waters.
Pike, who was sentenced to die for torturing and killing 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995, is one of at least eight condemned inmates in the U.S. who left their state’s execution chamber still alive because of problems carrying out the punishment, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Pike is the only one who was actually administered lethal drugs before the process was halted, according to the organization.
Not all have faced execution a second time. Three of the inmates would die years later in prison, two remain alive and two were executed after another attempt.
Lethal injection failures in Ohio
Ohio unsuccessfully tried to put Romell Broom to death by lethal injection in September 2009. The execution was called off after two hours when technicians could not find a suitable vein, and Broom cried in pain while receiving 18 needle sticks.
Broom died in December 2020 of possible complications of COVID-19 while on Ohio’s death row.
Ohio also failed to execute another inmate, Alva Campbell, in November 2017 by lethal injection. The execution was halted after executioners couldn’t find a usable vein.
Campbell was found unresponsive in his death row cell in March 2018. It was determined that he died from natural causes.
Alabama executed inmates a second time after failed attempts
Alabama called off the execution of Doyle Lee Hamm in February 2018 because of problems getting the intravenous line connected. A doctor hired by Hamm’s legal team later wrote in a report, filed in court, that Hamm had to be carried back to his cell by correctional officers after the execution was called off because he was in so much pain.
Hamm died of natural causes on death row in November 2021.
In September 2022, Alabama unsuccessfully executed Alan Eugene Miller by lethal injection when executioners spent more than an hour trying and failing to properly insert the catheter, repeatedly puncturing Miller with needles trying to find a vein. At one point, they left him hanging vertically on a gurney before state officials made the decision to call off the execution, according to news coverage at the time.
Miller had originally asked for nitrogen gas, but the Alabama Department of Corrections told a federal district court that they could not complete the execution that way.
The state successfully executed him two years later in September 2024 with nitrogen gas.
Almost two months after failing to execute Miller, Alabama had a second failed execution, when executioners did not have enough time to get a second IV line in before the death warrant expired at midnight for Kenneth Eugene Smith.
Smith was the first person to die by nitrogen gas as an execution method in January 2024.
Idaho prisoner remains alive
Idaho halted the execution of Thomas Eugene Creech in February 2024 after medical team members repeatedly failed to find a vein to carry out the lethal injection. In some cases, they couldn’t access the vein, and in others they could but had concerns about vein quality. They attempted sites in his arms, legs, hands and feet. At one point, a medical team member left to gather more supplies.
After eight attempts, the prison warden told them to give up. Creech remains alive and on death row.
Pike was the second failed execution in Tennessee this year
Four months before Pike’s execution went awry, Tennessee officials called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers in May after his executioners tried and failed for over an hour to establish an intravenous line.
Lee announced soon afterward that the state would not try to execute Carruthers again for at least a year. Tennessee prison officials have said medical personnel had quickly established a primary IV line but were unable to find a suitable vein for a backup line as required by the state’s execution protocol. Efforts to insert a central line also failed.
Carruthers remains alive and on death row.
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