US death row inmate survives execution attempt

Nick Miles (0:00)

This is The Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Nick Miles and at 13 Hours GMT on Thursday, the 1st of October, these are our main stories. Christa Pike, a female prisoner on death row in the US state of Tennessee, has been taken to hospital after surviving two lethal injection attempts. Global bond markets come under pressure as US borrowing costs reached their highest level since 2002 Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, it's too early to say who was behind the attempt by a co-pilot to crash a flight from Dubai to Israel.

Juan Omar Sigston (0:36)

Also in this podcast, the regime will have really been suffocated many years ago, but actually nobody took upon themselves to do it. The objective is to be in Cuba once the regime falls.

Nick Miles (0:50)

After President Trump told the US he wants fundamental change in Cuba, we meet the exiles in Florida, planning for the future.

We begin in the US state of Tennessee, where the debate around the death penalty has been brought once again into focus in the most dramatic of ways. Christa Pike, a female prisoner convicted of murder, had been due to be executed, but she survived not one, but two lethal injections at a prison in Nashville.

The governor of Tennessee has ordered a temporary halt to executions. Christa Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of her classmate. If she'd been executed, she would have been the first woman put to death in Tennessee in more than 200 years. John North is a producer at WBIR Television in Knoxville and was present as a witness at the attempted execution. He had this to say at a press conference later on.

John North (1:48)

It appeared this did not go like they thought it was supposed to go. But we don't know that. When we left the building, so far as we knew, she was probably still alive. You just saw the emergency vehicles pull up. We don't know her status. And I think it's fair to say we have a lot of questions. Why was it that by the time the blinds went down for the second time at 8.05, she was still breathing, and her breathing at points was very rhythmic. Now, at times it appeared labored. She was snoring at times, but she was still breathing.

Nick Miles (2:20)

Prison officials say they followed every step of the state's protocol. The attempted execution followed a day of legal limbo as the US Supreme Court overturned a reprieve granted by an appeals court hours earlier.

Our World Service correspondent Stephanie Hegarty told me the latest.

Stephanie Hegarty (2:37)

We still don't know how she is right now. Her lawyers haven't been given any update. Last I heard from them, they didn't know anything about her condition, just that she was in hospital and being treated. What one of the reporters who witnessed this botched execution said is that Christa Pike at one point said that she felt a burning sensation in her arm, that it felt like it was about to explode and she asked the room if this was normal. That may suggest that the doctors didn't manage to get the pentobarbital into her veins. We know as well that Christa Pike's legal team had argued before this, that she had small veins, that they might struggle to find a vein. So that could be what happened here.

Nick Miles (3:11)

What happens to Christa Pike's case now?

Stephanie Hegarty (3:13)

The governor of Tennessee has issued a stay on any execution till the end of the year, so she won't be executed before the end of 2026 But we know from a case in May also in Tennessee, where a man called Tony Carruthers also experienced a failed execution, they couldn't find a vein in his case. He received a stay of execution for one year. It's not clear what exactly is going to happen in Christa Pike's case, but that is the precedent here.

Nick Miles (3:35)

Now, even before this botched execution attempt, the case of Christa Pike had caused huge amounts of controversy across the United States and beyond. Tell us why.

Stephanie Hegarty (3:46)

Even yesterday, this execution had been delayed by several hours because of a last-minute plea. So the Court of Appeals had issued a stay about an hour before the execution was about to take place at 10 a.m. And then the state of Tennessee appealed to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court vacated that stay really late, and the execution started at about 6:30 p.m. So there was legal wrangling right up until the very end here. The reason that that stay was put in place by the Court of Appeal was that Christa Pike's lawyers argued that her history of really extreme neglect and sexual, psychological, physical abuse in her childhood was never taken into account by her original trial jury.