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

Source: New York Post

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.