Not so lethal injection

Christa Pike’s botched lethal injection is under investigation. I witnessed the controversial execution of the “Trunk Murders” killer.  

Pike survived two doses of toxic chemicals on Sept. 30. She was hospitalized and is said to be brain dead. The state of Tennessee is looking to see what went wrong.

Bennie Demps was convicted of killing two people and wounding a third in the “Trunk Murders” case in 1971 in Lake County, Fla.

His victims stumbled upon the ex-Marine and another man trying to open a stolen safe that they had carried into a Lake County orange grove. He forced all three into the trunk of their car and opened fire with an AK-47.

He escaped Florida’s “Old Sparky” electric chair thanks to a nationwide U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

In 2000, I was assigned by the Orlando Sentinel to cover his final appointment with the executioner after he killed a fellow prisoner.

Demps, a 49-year-old African-American, claimed he was innocent and that he was being killed in “a low-tech lynching by poison.”

When the curtain was opened for witnesses, he turned to the speaker behind the glass enclosure and told his lawyer: “Mr. Schaefer, they butchered me back there.” He said he was in “a lot of pain.”

Prison officials had trouble finding a suitable vein, a possible problem in Pike’s case, if not a weak toxic chemical cocktail.

In Demps’ case, the execution team placed a line in his muscular arm, then searched for an alternate in his groin area if needed.   

The prison team went back to the primary line and he was soon put to death.

But defense attorneys seized upon the Constitutional right against “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Florida had pulled the plug on its 74-year-old electric chair after a prisoner’s mask caught fire in a horrifying spectacle in 1997.

But there have been dozens of reported cases of botched lethal injections across the nation, mostly because of failure to find a suitable vein.  Some doctors have refused to push the button releasing the chemicals citing their oath to “cause no harm.”  

Drug companies and states try to keep their lethal formulas secret for fear of protests or legal action.  Some companies have refused to sell the drugs for executions.

Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his second death warrant within a week on Monday. The state is on pace to exceed its modern era record of 19 in 2025.