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In 1996, at twenty years old, Christa Pike was sentenced to death for the murder of Colleen Slemmer, her classmate at a job training camp in Knoxville, Tennessee, just over a year earlier. Three decades have passed since the conviction, but the story remains relevant: Last week, the State of Tennessee botched its execution of Pike, who survived two lethal injections, and the case became national news again. She is now unconscious and on a ventilator at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.
John North, an investigative producer at WBIR, in Knoxville, began reporting on the case at the Knoxville News Sentinel in 1995. Decades later, when the Tennessee Department of Corrections announced that it would be registering media witnesses, he put his name down. “Me being this guy who has covered this case since it happened,” he told me, “I thought, ‘Well, I’m still working, I’m still a journalist, I’ve been doing this so long. I guess it’s appropriate that I be somebody who witnesses it.’” As interest in Pike’s story grows, many publications have relied on North, who was one of seven journalists at the failed execution. His account has been edited for length and clarity.
Leading up to the execution day, Christa was already known in some sectors of the world, if you will, because she was the only woman on death row in Tennessee, and very few women get to that point. So she had that notoriety. Also, she had been the subject of various documentaries and true-crime shows. Come Wednesday, there was already this great expectation that this was going to happen.
The State of Tennessee had recently changed its execution method from a three-drug cocktail to a single-drug cocktail: pentobarbital, a barbiturate. Christa’s lawyers had litigated this whole issue and had said repeatedly in lawsuits, and also in a court hearing for Christa here in Knoxville in August, that she has small veins, so they would be subjecting her to a situation where this pentobarbital could blow out of her veins and wander around in her body. And it’s an alkali, so it would burn her. They said it would expose her to tremendous suffering. But the court system did not feel convinced enough about what they argued.
And so all judicial bodies, including the United States Supreme Court, said this was going to go forward. It was a really long day Wednesday. Christa was supposed to be executed with the process beginning at 10am at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. That’s Central Time. But it didn’t happen because there was a last-minute flurry of appeals activity. Ultimately, by six o’clock, Nashville time, the United States Supreme Court said, “No, we’re not buying that. This process is okay to go forward.”
At 6:42, we were led into the witness chamber, a small concrete-block room with four reflecting glass panels. We couldn’t see anything—the blinds were down. Then, at 7:27, the blinds were raised. We could see Christa lying on a gurney with her spiritual adviser.
We heard sounds of preparation before that: wrappers, paper, crinkling sounds, tape. She was asked if there was anything she wanted to say. “Yes,” she replied. “I’m going out of this world the way I’ve always lived it: with love. And that’s for the people who hate me as well as those who love me, and maybe it’s even more so for the people who hate me.” She said: “I’m at peace, and I’m ready to go.” And then she and her adviser began to sing a little song, which was something like, “Be at peace, be at ease.” And I thought, Well, okay, I guess here we go.
My anticipation was that within about twenty minutes, she should have been unconscious, and pretty much gone, because these were very, very large doses of a drug that is supposed to kill you. But anyway, it didn’t happen. Twenty minutes passed, and all this time she’s been kind of fading away. A few minutes after it started, she said, “Have they started it yet?”
At about 7:46 or so, the blinds were just suddenly dropped with no explanation. And we were put in the dark, and I didn’t know what that meant because that had never happened to me before. (I had witnessed two other execution procedures.) Then the spiritual adviser went back into the chamber. The blinds went up again. We were now able to see what was happening again—which is our function, which is what we were supposed to be doing, which is what the law says is supposed to happen. And um, she was snoring. I kept looking and leaning in, thinking, When am I going to see the signs that she’s truly out, and her bodily functions are slowing down to nothing, which is what’s supposed to happen? And it just simply didn’t happen.
I knew something was wrong. It was obvious. And yes, some of us began to murmur and say, “What’s going on? And why have you dropped the blinds? That doesn’t seem to be part of the procedure. We should be able to see what’s going on.”
The Tennessee Department of Corrections personnel who were in the room with us said, “We don’t know. We don’t have an explanation for you. We can’t tell you.” At 8:05, the blinds were dropped again. At 8:53, the warden came on the intercom and said, “All witnesses, please leave the area,” and we were escorted out. They told us we could stay in the office room or mail room to just kind of gather our thoughts. I thought, Yeah, that’s a good idea. I would like to do that, please.
Looking back, I find it really hard to believe that all this time has passed, to be candid with you. I’m kind of like, “Really? It’s been thirty-one years? Holy cow.” This isn’t something that I sort of set out to do. This isn’t something that I thought I’d put on my résumé. A lot of the people who have been involved in this case, as you would guess, are gone. The judge retired some years ago; the two prosecutors have passed. Detective York, who oversaw the investigation, is still around, and I talked to him and actually called him before the execution, just to say, “Hey, Randy.” And then Colleen’s mother is still alive. But there aren’t so many people around. So I guess it’s just fallen to me to be one of the witnesses.
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