World brief: a United States story we are following for readers in Fiji.
Authorities in the US state of Tennessee have released 911 recordings showing that emergency crews were held up for more than half an hour after the failed execution of death row inmate Christa Pike at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution on the night of September 30. The recordings, obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request, capture prison staff, dispatchers and first responders arguing over whether a call for help from the execution chamber was even real.
Key facts
- The first 911 call came in at 8:40pm local time on September 30, just over an hour after the attempted lethal injection got underway, according to NBC 6 South Florida.
- The caller could not supply a code that would verify the request and allow ambulances onto prison property without a police escort, ABC News reports.
- At 9:03pm the call was declared false, with no medical assistance needed at Riverbend. ABC News and The Mirror attribute that statement to an unidentified person; NBC 6 South Florida and The Nightly attribute it to a dispatcher.
- Prison officials confirmed the call was legitimate shortly after 9pm, but published accounts differ by minutes on when responders actually got through the gates.
- Pike, 50, received two doses of the drug pentobarbital, was hospitalised in critical condition, and has since been discharged back to the women’s prison where she had been held for 30 years.
Why this is in our Fiji world brief
Riverbend is a long way from Suva, and this is a world item rather than a Fiji one. We are carrying it because the recordings are the first official, time-stamped account of a state-run execution unravelling in real time, and because it extends two death-penalty stories we have already covered: Tennessee’s execution pause and US polling on the death penalty and the US military’s planned Fort Hood execution.
What the recordings show
In the initial call, a person whose name and title were redacted said they were at Riverbend and had tried to execute someone, but she was still alive, according to The Nightly. ABC News reports the caller described Pike as unconscious with breathing that was “very laboured”, and said 10 grams of pentobarbital — two doses under Tennessee protocol — had been administered about an hour earlier.
When the dispatcher asked for a verification code, the caller did not have one. ABC News reports a fire department employee could be heard asking how they did not have a code.
A second call went to the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC), the agency that runs the state’s prisons, seeking to confirm an ambulance was needed. At 8:59pm a TDOC employee told the dispatcher that nobody from the facility had called, ABC News reports. NBC 6 South Florida reports that at 9:07pm representatives of the prison’s Central Control said they “would have been the ones to call in” and had not made the call.
Minutes later a responder radioed that someone outside the prison gate was insisting the emergency was real and demanding to be let in, saying they were some sort of state official.
The outlets’ accounts then differ by minutes on when the gates opened, a discrepancy that is itself part of the record. ABC News reports ambulances reached the prison at 9:10pm and that at 9:11pm the dispatcher said first responders were stuck at the gates without an entry code. NBC 6 South Florida reports Central Control cleared responders to enter at about 9:11pm, and that an AP reporter saw an ambulance and fire trucks pull up to the building inside the prison campus at 9:14pm. None of the published accounts reconciles the three times.
At 9:34pm, as medics were taking Pike to hospital, one asked dispatch to make sure the prison knew where she was being taken, saying there had been so much other confusion, NBC 6 South Florida reports.
How the tapes were released
ABC News reports the calls were released by Metro Nashville’s Emergency Communications Center after a records request by local media, and that the local outlet The Tennessean said it received recordings of six outgoing calls from emergency dispatch to highway patrol, the fire department, police and TDOC.
Pike’s condition and her lawyers’ next step
Pike was on a ventilator for several days and at one point her attorneys did not expect her to survive, The Nightly reports. She regained consciousness on Tuesday last week and began speaking in a limited way and walking with assistance.
Her attorney Randy Spivey told reporters outside the Tennessee court house that Pike was “very aware that the state tried to execute her”, and said her first two questions on waking were where she was and who he was, according to The Mirror. Her lawyers said she had been shackled to a hospital bed in a heavily guarded room and felt confused and angry, and that she is grateful to the first responders and her medical team. ABC News reports she was still receiving medical treatment at the women’s prison as of Saturday.
Background
Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the January 1995 killing of her classmate Colleen Slemmer, 19, whom she lured to an isolated area of the University of Tennessee campus, The Mirror reports, after believing Slemmer was interested in her boyfriend. She was 18 at the time, becoming one of the youngest women sentenced to death in the US. Her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and their friend Shadolla Peterson were also convicted over the murder.
She was due to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years, according to The Mirror, but survived the lethal injection attempt. NBC 6 South Florida notes state protocol calls for a second dose of pentobarbital if the first does not result in death, but does not spell out what to do if an inmate survives the second injection. TDOC has not said what went wrong.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did anyone other than prison staff call for help that night?
Yes. NBC 6 South Florida reports that one of Pike’s attorneys, Kelly Gleason, made an emergency call at 9:08pm, telling the dispatcher her client had completed the stages of the protocol and, as far as her lawyers knew, was still alive, breathing and in need of immediate life-saving care. ABC News reports that two further recordings reached the media outside the Nashville dispatch records request: one handed out by the Tennessee Department of Correction and one by Pike’s legal team, the latter being Gleason’s call.
Has all of the 911 audio been made public?
No. According to NBC 6 South Florida, the Nashville Department of Emergency Communications released a batch of dispatcher recordings with some redactions, but police said the audio of the first 911 call was exempt from public disclosure under state law, so it was released only as a written transcript.
What have medical experts said could explain why Pike survived?
The Nightly and NBC 6 South Florida report that medical experts have raised potential drug quality issues and the placement of IV lines causing the drug to pool in her tissue. The Mirror reports it is believed a ruptured vein caused most of the pentobarbital to accumulate in her tissues. NBC adds that before the attempt, Pike’s attorneys told courts and prison officials she had a blood disorder that could cause clotting at injection sites.
Will Tennessee try to execute Christa Pike again?
It is unclear. NBC 6 South Florida reports that Governor Bill Lee paused further execution attempts pending a review, and that it is not known whether the state will try to execute Pike again. Her attorneys are seeking to have her taken off death row and her punishment reduced to life in prison, according to The Mirror.
