From The Washington Post:
Confusion delayed aid to Christa Pike after botched execution, 911 calls show
Emergency responders were not let into the Tennessee prison for at least a half hour after an initial emergency call.
At least a half hour passed between an initial 911 call and when emergency responders were let into the Tennessee prison to administer aid to Pike, the only woman on the state’s death row.
The first call came at 8:40 p.m. local time on Sept. 30, about an hour after officials began trying to execute Pike, 50, by injecting her with the drug pentobarbital at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
During that call, a worker inside the prison reported that a person in the execution chamber was unconscious but “not yet deceased” after being administered 10 grams of pentobarbital. When the dispatcher asked for a code needed to verify emergency calls from a prison, however, the worker was not able to provide one, according to a transcript of the call.
Recordings show that over the next half hour, different dispatchers called police and corrections officials to try to verify the legitimacy of the request from the prison.
At 9:03 p.m., one dispatcher told responders that according to supervisors at the Tennessee Department of Correction, it was a “false call” and “there is no medical assistance needed at Riverbend prison.”
Another dispatcher called the prison and asked to confirm reports of a “failed execution at you guys’ facility.”
After some back-and-forth, someone at the prison told the dispatcher, “I’m being told that nobody from our facility called you, so there’s not really anything to speak of at the moment.”
At 9:08 p.m., one of Pike’s attorneys, Kelly Gleason, called and informed a dispatcher that her client was “undergoing a state execution” but, after receiving two intravenous doses of pentobarbital, was “still alive and breathing, and needs immediate lifesaving care.”
In the final call at 9:11 p.m., a dispatcher contacted the prison and said a fire engine and medics were staged nearby but needed an escort inside.
The dispatcher also told the official on the other end: “Just so you guys are aware, the defense attorney by the name of Kelly Gleason is calling and asking us for an update. So it’s escalating.”
“There’s someone at the gate telling them to come in, that they need the ambulance, and this is an actual thing that is happening,” a dispatcher said.
Shortly after, Pike was taken to a nearby hospital. She since has been released and returned to prison.
The episode once again raised questions about the state’s execution procedures and how prepared officials were for any possible complications.
Months before the planned execution, Pike and her attorneys worried that the lethal injection could falter.
In court filings and a multiday hearing, attorneys challenged the state’s existing protocols, raising fears that she could endure undue suffering and that a blood disorder and her small veins might cause complications. They also sought an alternative form of execution, such as a firing squad.
Joel Zivot, an Atlanta-based professor of anesthesiology and surgery who consulted with Pike’s legal team, said they also sought a contingency if the execution failed.
“We specifically asked for resuscitation capacity that would be readily available,” Zivot said in an interview Tuesday. That, along with other requests, was ultimately denied.
Deborah Denno, a professor at the Fordham School of Law and founding director of the Neuroscience and Law Center, said the release of the 911 calls raises an uncomfortable truth: that most states do not have detailed plans for what happens if an inmate survives an execution attempt.
“There’s a resistance to acknowledge that anything could ever go wrong,” she said.
Pike’s case also underscores a related quandary, Denno said. By law, prison inmates are entitled to health care. But once a condemned prisoner enters the death chamber, she said, the rules that would govern more ordinary circumstances seem to become blurry.
They are just not privy to the same kinds of safeguards that even someone in regular population would have,” Denno said. “It’s as though they are in this nonperson zone.”
The lack of clarity can lead to the kind of confusion that seems to have reigned on the night of Pike’s planned execution, Zivot said. Pike entered the execution chamber to be put to death, but “at some point, it became clear that she became a patient,” he said.
Hours after the botched execution, Gov. Bill Lee (R) halted all executions in Tennessee for the rest of the year and ordered a third-party review into what happened.
The incident revived questions about methods of execution nationwide and led to the resignation of Tennessee’s prison chief.
Pike regained consciousness and the ability to talk last week, according to her attorneys. She was discharged from the hospital over the weekend and moved to the prison where she was housed for more than 30 years.
“She is grateful to the first responders and her medical team for their care in these extraordinary circumstances. She is continuing to receive medical care at the prison, and we will continue to track her recovery,” Pike’s attorneys said in a statement Saturday.
A jury sentenced Pike to death decades ago for her role in killing 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995.
Pike and two other teens — her boyfriend and another girl — lured Slemmer into a wooded area in Knoxville, where they beat, tortured and killed her. The teenagers knew each other through the Knoxville Job Corps, and prosecutors argued that Pike believed Slemmer was interested in her boyfriend.
Pike admitted to hitting the girl in the head with asphalt, cutting her throat and taking a piece of her skull as a souvenir, court documents said.
Katie Mettler and Aiofe Walsh contributed to this report.
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