MINI TRUE CRIME ROUNDUP: Waking up from a lethal injection, plus new attention on firing squad executions

Lauren Barry (0:02)

This is a True Crime Roundup from The On Deadline Podcast. We explore crime stories reported on by Audacy's radio newsrooms across the country. I'm your host, Lauren Barry.

For the second week in a row, the story of Christa Pike, a woman who survived her botched execution in Tennessee, has been making headlines. No information was revealed about why this attempted legal injection failed and how she woke up after being put on a ventilator. We'll listen to discussion about the case from multiple angles, multiple stations, and multiple experts.

In 1995, Christa Pike and her then-boyfriend brutally murdered their 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer at the Jobs Corps Training Program in Tennessee. According to reports, Pike kept a piece of Slemmer's skull, and a pentagram was carved into the victim's skin. Pike, now 50 years old, was sentenced to death, and her execution was scheduled for September 30th. However, that lethal injection attempt didn't work. Instead of dying, Pike could be heard snoring, and she was rushed to the hospital, where she was put on a ventilator. This Tuesday, October 6th, Pike woke up. Her case has opened up a national discussion about the death penalty, even as her own fate remains unclear. ABC News' Peter Haralambos joined A New Morning out of Audacy's station WBEN News and Talk in Buffalo this week to discuss the Pike situation.

SPEAKER_2 (1:54)

Peter, what is the latest here?

Peter Haralambos (1:56)

Good morning. Recovery at this point, after questions were raised last week about whether Christa Pike would ever regain consciousness, her lawyer is saying that nearly a week after that execution attempt has gone terribly wrong, she is awake, she is conscious, she is talking, though she say that she's still in pain from those injuries to her arms, that she's still handcuffed to the hospital bed. Her lawyers are due to appear in court today where they're arguing to preserve some evidence related to that botched execution. They're also calling on the Tennessee governor to commute her sentence from a death penalty to a life sentence.

SPEAKER_4 (2:29)

It has to be one of the strangest stories because she was there to be executed, Peter. Then all of a sudden, you're on life-saving equipment.

Help us make sense of it all, of how one has to happen after the other didn't.

Peter Haralambos (2:48)

Yeah, there's an underlying irony to all of this in terms of the fact that they're struggling to keep her alive after they tried to kill her. In this case, she was ready to go basically. She, when she was about to get executed, she basically told the people in the room that this was a happy ending for her, that she was ready to go, and now they're fighting to try to keep her alive at this point. They don't necessarily know why this happened. There's now been a pause of the death penalty in Tennessee because this is the second time this has happened in less than five months.

Lawyers also are pushing just generally to ensure that she not get executed again. They argue that what happened already with this botched execution, where they put seven different needles into her arms in this attempt to actually execute her, amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, and that the only just outcome after this failed execution would be to lower her sentence to life in prison.

SPEAKER_2 (3:44)

All of this is so unprecedented. She is said to be speaking. Do we know what she has said at all yet?

Peter Haralambos (3:51)

Her lawyers have not really revealed that many details about what she's saying, what her attitude is on this matter at this point.

They're expected to have a press conference today where they're going to provide more details. Her lawyers also have raised concerns about the fact that they had limited access to her during this kind of critical moment over the last week. That being said, they thanked the medical professionals who have fought to keep her alive over the last six days while criticizing prison officials for continuing to have her handcuffed to her bed. Her lawyers have also pointed to the fact that she has notable injuries on both her arms. At this point, we don't know what caused this execution to go wrong, but one possible outcome, one possible theory is that basically they missed the vein, that all of this lethal drug, pentobarbital, effectively pulled up in her arms. That's why she might have chemical burns there, and ultimately why she might have survived this, because it didn't actually hit her main artery, that would have spread this lethal drug throughout her entire system.

Lauren Barry (4:50)

Attorney Brad Garrett also joined A New Morning to provide insight on the Pike case.