Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has ordered for all scheduled executions in the state to be halted after the execution of Christa Pike failed dramatically on Wednesday. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center called the incident “unparalleled” after Pike was still breathing following two lethal pentobarbital injections. While the survival after injections is particularly shocking, failed or botched executions in other circumstances are well documented.
A botched execution is a broad term used to cover any execution in which something goes wrong. This can include delays, procedural failures, equipment malfunctions, problems administering the execution method, prolonged dying, or other complications that cause unnecessary suffering or reflect serious errors by officials. Depending on the method used, botched executions have involved difficulty establishing IV lines, improperly administered drugs, malfunctioning electric chairs, problems with gas chambers, and other departures from established protocols.
"I think many people believe the line that the state has sold, which is that the person will just slip off into sleep—like putting your favorite pet to sleep. So I think cases like Pike’s really pull back that curtain," Blaire Andres head of U.S. death penalty case work for nonprofit Reprieve that advocates against lethal injection, told Newsweek. "While this is probably one of the worst executions in American history, what we saw last night is not unusual.
Botched executions by lethal injection are unfortunately not unusual. They happen quite a lot," Andres said. According to The Death Penalty Information Center, between 1890 to 2010 there were 8,776 executions and 276 of them were botched, giving an overall botched rate of 3.15 percent.
In these figures, lethal injection had the highest botch rate at 7.20 percent. This was compared with 5.4 percent for lethal gas, 3.12 percent for hanging and 1.92 percent for electrocution. The only method with no reported botched incidents was firing squad.
In a 2024 report by Reprieve, 73 of 1,407 lethal injection executions or attempted executions between 1977 and December 2023 were classified as botched, a rate of about 5.2 percent. "Due to the extensive secrecy around executions... it is likely that the true number of botched executions in the reporting period is much higher than the number identified in the dataset,” the report read. There are cases of botched execution involving hanging, electrocution and lethal gas, but most high profile cases relate to lethal injection.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
