The botched execution of Christa Pike has sparked debate about the death penalty in the United States, where lethal injections, experts say, are frequently marred by mishaps and incompetence. The attempted execution of Pike, a woman sentenced to death for her participation in the murder of a classmate when she was 18 years old, was called off after two doses of pentobarbital failed to kill her on September 30. Witnesses reported that she continued to breathe, snore and lift parts of her body off the gurney to which she was strapped even after the lethal injections were administered.
Pike’s lawyers said that she had regained consciousness at the hospital on October 6 but faces a long path to recovery. Governor Bill Lee announced a pause on executions in the state and promised a “comprehensive, third-party review” of the incident, the second case this year in which Tennessee authorities have called off an execution after a failed lethal injection attempt. The Tennessee Department of Correction declined to comment when asked by Al Jazeera why the execution attempt failed and whether it planned to try to execute Pike again.
While the case has attracted nationwide attention, experts say that botched execution attempts, largely carried out through lethal injection, are a disturbingly common feature of capital punishment in the US. Of the various methods of execution in the US, lethal injection is by far the most common. It is also among the least reliable.
States such as Tennessee, Idaho, Alabama, Arizona, Texas and Oklahoma have all recorded at least one botched execution via lethal injection since 2022, and a survey of executions in the US between 1890 and 2010 found that lethal injections were botched at more than twice the rate of all other methods. Researchers attribute the poor record of lethal injection to a number of factors, including the difficulty of carrying out what amounts to a medical procedure in a prison setting without access to qualified staff. Major medical organisations bar members from assisting in executions on the basis that it violates their mandate to do no harm, meaning that prisons rely on staff members or officials with dubious credentials to carry out the procedure.
But it has been warped to fit the needs of execution settings,” said Corinna Barrett Lain, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law and author of a book on lethal injection. She explained that she has witnessed botched executions that drag on for hours and include prisoners being punctured with needles more than a dozen times. Such pharmacies often prepare medications not manufactured commercially, and the drugs they produce are not as extensively scrutinised as mass-produced medications.
Some states have also sought to stretch existing stockpiles of drugs used in lethal injections, though they can become expired or faulty. The risks are compounded by the people the lethal injections are administered to. Those on death row often spend years or even decades waiting for their execution.
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