Following a botched lethal injection involving death row inmate Christa Pike in Tennessee, state authorities suspended executions for the year.
Capital punishment laws in the United States drew renewed scrutiny after an execution involving Christa Pike in Tennessee, according to reporting by the Daily Mirror. Pike survived two rounds of a lethal injection, prompting the state governor to suspend all executions for the year, as reported by Misrnews. According to WPLN reporter Catherine Sweeney, who spoke at a conference, witnesses observed Pike still breathing raggedly after two rounds, lifting her head to look around, and asking if a burning sensation she felt was normal. State records show that around 2,000 people currently wait on death row in America, while 47 men were put to death last year—the highest annual total since 2009.
Historical Execution Failures in Utah and New York
The recent events recall early historical execution failures in American courts. In May 1879, Wallace Wilkerson faced a firing squad in Provo, Utah, after a conviction for murdering William Baxter during a card game dispute in June 1877. Wilkerson refused to have his eyes blindfolded, and executioners marked a white target near his heart. When the signal was given, Wilkerson moved, resulting in three bullets hitting his chest and one striking his hand. He screamed in pain as a doctor attempted to help, and Wilkerson ultimately died 27 minutes later from severe blood loss. The United States Supreme Court subsequently declined to hear the case, ruling that the method was not cruel and unusual.
Roughly a decade later in New York, William Kemmler became the first person executed via the electric chair after being convicted of murdering his wife in May 1889. Auburn Prison officials tested the new method on a horse using a one-thousand-volt alternating current before proceeding with Kemmler. On August 6, 1890, executioners delivered a one-thousand-volt shock, but examinations revealed Kemmler was still breathing. Officials then powered the generator to two thousand volts. During the second attempt, blood burst from Kemmler’s body and the room filled with the smell of burning flesh, causing nausea among witnesses. The entire process spanned eight minutes between the two attempts while the generator was recharged.
Execution Protocol Failures Cause Severe Complications
Lethal injection protocols have similarly encountered severe complications in modern decades. On December 13, 2006, Angel Nieves Diaz grimaced, coughed, and shuddered on a gurney as a drug cocktail was administered. Needles had mistakenly entered soft tissue in his arm rather than his veins, resulting in horrific chemical burns. The incident prompted then-governor Jeb Bush to temporarily suspend executions to review Florida’s protocol.
Other states have faced prolonged difficulties or turned to new methods. In April 2018 at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, Clayton Lockett, 38, took 45 minutes to die after being convicted of murder, rape, and kidnapping, enduring about six minutes of periodic gulping breaths before becoming still. In February 2018 at Alabama’s Holman Correctional Facility, staff and medics spent over two and a half hours failing to find suitable veins in Doyle Lee Hamm’s groin, feet, and legs, stabbing him eleven times before the execution was called off. Hamm’s lawyer described the attempt as botched and bloody
and productive of physical and mental duress
. More recently, in January 2024, Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, became the first inmate killed using nitrogen gas at an Alabama prison, breathing pure nitrogen through a face mask to induce oxygen deprivation. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Corrections, Kelly Betts, stated that the execution team strictly followed the established protocol, which dictates that if veins are such that intravenous access cannot be provided, the team will perform a central line procedure. Fortunately, that was not necessary as adequate time allowed intravenous access to be established for Joe Nathan James, who was convicted for the murder of former girlfriend Faith Hall in 1994 and sentenced to death five years later.
