I was an official witness at Christa Pike's botched execution. Her tears, laughter, disturbing snores and the rock they placed on her chest will haunt me for ever

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

50% : It should have taken just a few minutes for Pike's life to have been ended, by lethal injection at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville - making her the first woman to be executed in the state of Tennessee for more than 200 years.
46% : His words were backed up by fellow witnesses and death penalty campaigners across the world.
41% : Pike was 18 when she, along with her boyfriend and a second young woman, lured Colleen to her death under the pretence of smoking cannabis As for Pike, just weeks ago her lawyers filed a 226-page petition asking the state governor to commute her death penalty to a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
38% : Instead, today the 50-year-old murderer holds another place in the annals of legal history as the woman who was given a lethal injection - twice - yet survived.
37% : Pike's legal team, apart from arguing that her age at the time of the crime and extensive physical and sexual abuse she suffered as a child should be a factor in determining the severity of her punishment, had also said that lethal injection was fraught with risk.
16% : And Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said: 'This event is the worst we've seen and unlike any other in the modern era.' Christa Pike, while on death row, appeared in court back in April 2012 to fight a conviction in a 2001 attack on an inmate Pike's life was set to have been ended by lethal injection at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee Randall Spivey, a member of Pike's legal team who was also present, said: 'Last night was not just inefficient, it was cruel and it was torturous.'

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