Lethal injection has proven to be a difficult execution method to get right. It is more frequently botched than any other method. Sometimes, the results are catastrophic, as they were in Wednesday’s failed execution of Christa Pike.
The 50-year-old, who was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, survived a severely botched execution by lethal injection on Wednesday. The drugs meant to kill her did not do their job, and she is now in critical condition, intubated, unconscious and on a ventilator in a Nashville-area hospital. According to her lawyer, Pike’s prognosis is unclear, as is the question of whether she will suffer a serious brain injury and loss of function.
