Christa Pike’s botched execution is a reminder of the horror of the death penalty

‘We should be angry, too. In our name, a woman was tortured.’ Photograph: Dipti Vaidya/IMAGN IMAGES/Reuters Connect

Christa Pike had asked to be hanged. In the weeks before her botched execution by lethal injection on 30 September, in which she survived two lethal doses of barbiturate pentobarbital and had to be hospitalized, Pike and her legal team had challenged Tennessee’s execution protocol.

The state’s lethal injection regimen had failed before. In May, Tony Carruthers was also sent to Tennessee’s death chamber, only to leave alive after prison officials struggled to find a vein.