I've seen nearly 500 executions - but never one like Christa Pike's

Reporter Michael Graczyk has covered nearly 500 executions carried out in Texas, continuing even after his 2018 retirement from The Associated Press.

That's what happened this week in Tennessee, when 50-year-old inmate Christa Pike remained breathing and audibly snoring after two separate doses of pentobarbital, the barbiturate used in the state's lethal injection protocol.

Tennessee administered two lethal doses to execute Christa Pike, but she lived

Tennessee's execution protocol calls for a secondary set of pentobarbital-filled syringes in case the person being put to death does not die after the first set, according to AP, but does not spell out what happens if the subject is alive after the second set.

Pike is now in hospital where she is receiving "life-saving care", according to her lawyer.

It's not uncommon for lethal injections - the most frequently used form of capital punishment in the 27 US states where the penalty is legal - to be "botched". The Death Penalty Information Center, a think-tank that does not take a stance on the death penalty, describes a botched execution as one with "unanticipated problems or delays that caused, at least arguably, unnecessary agony for the prisoner or that reflect gross incompetence of the executioner". The organisation has compiled a list of 64 botched executions since 1982, 51 of them lethal injections. In at least seven of those cases, th

"There is no [greater] authority, power, or whatever you want to call it, that state or federal government has over us than the power to take our life," he said.

"I always thought it was important for someone who has no stake in the outcome of a case to be there and to see the law being carried out and to make certain that it is done properly," Graczyk said.

The death chamber is seen from the viewing area at the Texas state penitentiary in Huntsville, where reporter Michael Graczyk has covered hundreds of executions

Although he is technically retired, he still works freelance for AP covering executions in his home state.

"I feel bad for the victims in the case," he said. "They are the forgotten folks. They always have been."

Pike's victim was Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old originally from Florida who loved to roller skate, smile and help others, according to descriptions given by her friends and family. Slemmer was tortured and killed by Pike, then 18, and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, after they met her at a job training camp.