The bloody history of botched executions including cop-killer whose head exploded after Christa Pike survived

Christa Pike became the first death row inmate to survive a lethal injection, but she was merely the latest in a long, gruesome history of botched executions — from a cop-killer’s head bursting into flames to executioners drunk on the job.Roughly 3% of all US executions in the century between 1890 and 2010 were botched, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.The highest number — at 85 — was for bungled hangings, including the 1901 hanging of outlaw Tom “Black Jack” Ketchum, whose head popped clean off when he dropped because executioners failed to account for how fat he had gotten in jail.Electrocutions took the second spot, with several incidents of the condemned inmates’ heads bursting into flame.In 1990, Florida cop killer Jesse Tafaro’s head ignited when the electric chair operators tried and failed to send waves of power through his body.They had mistakenly used a non-conductive synthetic sponge under his head cap, turning him into a human short-circuit.Another Florida inmate’s head caught fire seven years later.“Pedro Medina … was pronounced dead at 7:10 a.m., but not before a prison official wearing protective gloves helped douse the flames that shot from the condemned man’s head, and so much smoke filled the death chamber that a window to the outside was opened,” the LA Times wrote in 1997.Lethal injection — which was intended to be the modern, humane way to execute a killer — had 75 botched attempts by 2010.Rapist and murderer Clayton Lockett’s blood splattered all over the doctor who tried to jam a lethal injection needle into his groin area in 2014.“I don’t think he realized that he hit the artery, and I remember saying you’ve got the artery.

We’ve got blood everywhere,” a paramedic told The Guardian.The state of Alabama had three botched lethal injections in 2022 alone.Morning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more.

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