The emergency response to Christa Pike’s botched execution last month was delayed by about half an hour, because of confusion over the authenticity of the 911 call, according to dispatch and radio calls released on Monday.
The first 911 call for an ambulance was made by someone inside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution at 8:40 p.m. on Sept. 30, about an hour after the lethal injections there began, according to a redacted transcript of the phone call. But confirming the legitimacy of that call took several minutes of back and forth between Nashville emergency services and officials at the prison, according to audio from eight other calls and radio traffic, which was released as part of a public records request by several news organizations, including The New York Times.
The confusion seemed widespread. The initial 911 call did not come, as it might normally, from the central control at the Tennessee Department of Correction, and the caller did not have the right security verification.
In response, dispatch workers repeatedly tried to verify the call by reaching out to prison staff and other officials at the prison during the execution.
“We are trying to find out if that is an actual thing that is happening and we need to send an ambulance,” one caller said. Or, she added, “if this is someone that is just basically prank-calling.”
It appears from the phone calls that the Department of Correction’s central control was not immediately aware of the request for help.
One person at central control, who is not identified, tells Nashville emergency services that the department “would have been the one to call you guys — we didn’t call anyone.”
In another call, at 9:03 p.m., someone tells responders that supervisors have said “it is a false call” and that “there is no medical assistance needed.”
But at 9:07 p.m., an emergency responder says as part of radio traffic that “some sort of state official” is “outside the gate at the prison telling us that it’s real and demanding us to go in.”
Minutes later, they get word that prison officials have formally confirmed by phone that the request is legitimate.
The Tennessee Department of Correction did not immediately respond to a request for a comment about the apparent breakdown in communication. Previously, the agency said that every step of the protocol had been followed and the process did “not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out.”
Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol has come under renewed scrutiny after the failed attempt to carry out the execution of Ms. Pike, 50, who had been on death row for the torture and murder of Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old classmate in Knoxville. Lawyers for Ms. Pike, the first person to survive receiving two doses of the drug pentobarbital during an execution, said on Saturday that she had been discharged from a Nashville hospital and returned to prison.
The confusion captured on the calls appear to emphasize how the execution protocol, criticized by state defense lawyers and lawmakers in both parties for its vagueness, does not appear to account for problems during an execution. Tennessee has had two botched executions this year, including Ms. Pike’s.
The protocol really did not consider that the execution may not succeed, said Dr. Joel Zivot, an anesthesiologist and intensive care physician who consulted for Ms. Pike’s defense team before the failed execution.
Prison officials, he added, “had no idea that it could fail.”
Dr. Zivot was among the medical experts who warned that Ms. Pike’s underlying medical conditions, including small veins, could complicate the execution. Those warnings were ignored, her lawyers said.
“Considering, of course, what everyone said to them — that it could fail — they certainly did not seem to react,” Dr. Zivot said.
It was not clear from the recordings whether oxygen and other resuscitative gear were on hand in the execution chamber, or if Ms. Pike received medical care before an ambulance arrived more than an hour after the drugs were injected.
The transcript of the initial 911 call and some of the audio recordings were redacted, in part because Tennessee law prohibits the identification of anyone connected with execution procedures. But the person who made the initial 911 call appears unfamiliar with the steps needed to verify the legitimacy of an emergency call from the prison, leading to the effort to authenticate the call.
“Is nobody there that knows the process?” someone asks on a call between the Nashville Fire Department and emergency services.
“I have no idea,” someone else responds. “I guess because this is a special case, they may not know.”
The calls also show that Kelly Gleason, one of Ms. Pike’s lawyers, called 911 at 9:08 p.m., after a colleague who had witnessed the botched injections told her that Ms. Pike was still breathing.
“She is still alive and breathing and needs immediate lifesaving care,” Ms. Gleason said on her call for help. The ambulance drove through the gates a few minutes later.
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