THE BOTCHED execution of Christa Pike has saved death row killer Gary Wayne Sutton weeks before his own lethal injection. Pike, 50, is under guard in hospital and remains critically ill after

The failed execution of Christa Pike Wednesday night in Tennessee wasn’t the first time a lethal injection didn’t go as planned. It wasn’t even the first time this year in the state of Tennessee.

Since 1982, there have been at least 64 botched executions, the vast majority of which involved lethal injection, according to an analysis by the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. Seven of those execution attempts failed entirely because officials in Tennessee, Idaho, Alabama and Ohio could not properly insert intravenous lines.

Roughly 3% of all US executions in the century between 1890 and 2010 were botched, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Christa Pike is on death row in Tennessee for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Pike was scheduled to be executed on Wednesday night, but she was still alive after receiving two doses of a lethal injection.

Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada resigned, days after Christa Pike survived lethal injection.

BOTCHED death row executions have haunted the US for decades from a murderer whose head burst into flames to a doctor left soaked in blood. Hundreds of criminals have been subjected to horrific

Sheriff's investigators were trying to identify suspects and a motive for the shooting near Fruitridge Road.