TENNESSEE SAYS IT FOLLOWED THE EXECUTION PROTOCOL PERFECTLY. THE WOMAN IS AWAKE AND TALKING.

Tennessee tried to execute Christa Pike on September 30 at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. The state pushed two doses of pentobarbital. Media witnesses said she kept breathing, and at one point she appeared to snore. At 9:15 that night an ambulance and a fire truck pulled up to the prison, which is not a step in anybody's protocol. Later that night the Department of Correction said it had followed every step of the state's lawful, established execution protocol. So the official state position is that the procedure went exactly as written and the woman went to the hospital on a ventilator. Pike's lawyers say the IV lines were never placed correctly, that her veins blew, and that the drug pooled in her tissue instead of her bloodstream. They described her arms as swollen, burned and blistered. On Tuesday she woke up and started talking. Her own attorneys had believed she was brain dead and had been told she might be coming off life support. They call the recovery medically unprecedented, say she is angry and confused, and note that she is still shackled to the bed by arms she may never use again. Pike was sentenced in 1996 for the 1995 torture and killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, and Slemmer's family has backed the death sentence while saying the state handled this attempt absolutely terribly. Governor Bill Lee has halted executions for the year and ordered an outside review. He also halted them in 2022, after an investigation found officials breaking their own injection rules.

Why you should give a shit: Her lawyers want the sentence commuted to life without parole, and their strongest exhibit is the state's own statement that this is what the protocol working looks like.