I've seen nearly 500 executions - but never one like Christa Pike's

Reporter Michael Graczyk has covered nearly 500 executions carried out in Texas, continuing even after his 2018 retirement from The Associated Press. He remembers two instances where needles popped out before reinsertion for successful execution - but never one in which an inmate survived. That's what happened this week in Tennessee, when 50-year-old inmate Christa Pike remained breathing and audibly snoring after two separate doses of pentobarbital, the barbiturate used in the state's lethal injection protocol. Graczyk, 76, says he wasn't entirely surprised to hear of the anomaly - and had actually thought about the possibility during his decades-long career as a Texas journalist. "It seems to me it was just a matter of time," he told BBC News.