At Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, 49-year-old condemned inmate Christa Pike got two full doses of pentobarbital when one was supposed be sufficient to kill her. The second was administered into her bloodstream after the first didn’t work, following state protocols. But she still maintained a distinct heartbeat, and began snoring.
There were no rules in Tennessee for what should happen when a prisoner survives both lethal injections, because it’s not supposed to happen and had never happened before.
The microphones were shut off and viewing curtains were drawn. Attending medical staff then entered the execution chamber to evaluate vital signals, confirm the presence of a heartbeat, and determine whether there as acute respiratory distress. Defense attorneys recorded the information to file an emergency motion with a federal court citing evidence that their client survived and suffered unconstitutional pain, citing the 8th Amendment against “cruel and unusual” punishment. Pike was disconnected from the IV lines, her condition stabilized, and she was transferred by secure transport to an off-site civilian medical facility.
I must confess, because I have watched way too much TV, a Western I must have seen when I was about 10 had me believing that when a condemned prisoner survives an execution, such as a hanging, the prisoner is deemed to have completed his sentence and goes free. My father had confirmed this, saying that the real punishment in capital cases was the waiting and anticipation. The dying part was a breeze, or was supposed to be. (Last words of British acting legend, 19th-century actor Edmund Kean: “Dying is easy; comedy is hard.”)
Well, that legend is not true; that has never been the case in the U.S., and it has rarely been the practice anywhere. Wikipedia has a just-updated list of botched executions going back to 1540. It’s a long (and probably incomplete) list, but there are only two examples where the condemned was set free, and only three where the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, none since 1885.
That last lucky guy was John Henry George “Babbacombe” Lee (1864 –1945), an Englishman famous for surviving three attempts to hang him in 1885. He had been convicted of murder. Lee was eventually released and supported himself by touring and speaking about his strange life. There have been several books about Lee including “The Man They Could Not Hang” (Holgate and Waugh, 2005) and a silent film. He’s buried at Forest Home Cemetery, Milwaukee.
So that’s what happens when you survive an execution. You end up in Milwaukee….
But I digress. The issue at hand is what is the ethical, fair and responsible way to handle such situations.
Does this change your mind:
“On August 24, 2001, a fire forced staff at the Tennessee Prison for Women to move several women from their cells into a recreation cage. Among them were Pike, Natasha Cornett, and Patricia Jones. Jones was serving life for the 1994 murder of 84-year-old Alberta Coker in Knoxville. After a dispute between Jones and Cornett, Pike choked Jones with a boot lace or shoestring until Jones lost consciousness. Officers intervened and Jones survived.
Pike was convicted of attempted first-degree murder on August 12, 2004, and received a 25-year sentence, ordered to run with her existing death sentence. She told investigators she did not want to say she intended to kill Jones, but that she “didn’t care if she died” and “wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.” She claimed she was protecting Cornett. The trial court and the Court of Criminal Appeals found that her actions and statements contradicted a pure self-defense or protection story.”
Yes, in regard to Pike. Yikes. Kill it with fire!
The only thing wrong with execution by nitrogen asphyxiation is that it’s painless. Depriving a person of oxygen, without letting CO2 build up, is quick, inexpensive, and effective. Industrial accidents with pure-nitrogen atmospheres demonstrate that it causes prompt loss of consciousness without any sense of alarm, followed by a peaceful demise.
Well, there is ONE other problem… too many people would panic at the thought that they are, right now, breathing a gas mixture that contains 78% nitrogen.. that gas that kills people!