When the Second Dose Doesn't Kill, Tennessee's Protocol Has No Next Step
Tennessee execution team members failed multiple times to establish working IV lines in Christa Pike's arms before her attempted execution, her attorney wrote in a court document filed Thursday, PBS NewsHour reports.
Pike, 50, was hospitalized after surviving two doses of pentobarbital as the state tried to execute her on Sept. 30 for the 1995 stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer.
State protocol calls for a second dose of pentobarbital if the first doesn't result in death, but it doesn't spell out what to do if a person survives the second injection.
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A procedure that plans for a second dose but not for survival after it is an unhandled exception. That is an operational hole, not a moral abstraction.
The hole may start earlier: the IV team went through about 10 needles and tried several sites on both arms, according to attorney Randy Spivey.