Christa Pike, the Tennessee death row inmate who would have been the first woman executed in the state in more than 200 years, remains unconscious on a ventilator after the state’s attempt to put her to death failed Wednesday night, according to her attorneys.
Pike was sentenced to die for the 1995 torture killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Instead of completing the execution, the state left her critically injured and hospitalized, her legal team says.
“Christa remains critically ill and is receiving medical care for the devastating effects of Wednesday night’s events,” attorneys Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen said in a statement Friday. “She is critically ill, unconscious, intubated and receiving breathing assistance through a ventilator. She is being treated for the serious effects of the pentobarbital administered during the execution attempt, including significant injuries to both arms.”
Pike’s attorneys have filed an emergency motion in Davidson County Chancery Court demanding the Tennessee Department of Correction preserve all evidence from what they call a “botched attempted execution,” arguing the records are essential to determine what happened and to hold the state accountable.
Seven Needles, Two Lethal Doses
According to the filing, the execution team struggled to establish IV access, using at least seven needles before administering two separate lethal doses of pentobarbital. One needle reportedly bent at a 90-degree angle when removed.
The motion alleges Pike herself suggested to staff where they should try inserting the IV, and that she could be heard crying, whimpering and breathing loudly throughout the procedure. She allegedly told the execution team, “My arm feels like it’s about to burst open,” and later asked, “Does this happen like that?”
Pike arrived at the hospital with both arms “swollen, burned, and blistered,” the filing states. Medical experts cited in the motion compared pentobarbital’s effects on tissue to “bleach” or “Drano,” describing it as caustic enough to burn skin, tissue and veins.
The attorneys say the execution team never realized the IV lines had failed and that pentobarbital was leaking outside Pike’s veins before a second lethal dose was prepared and administered.
“Apparently at no point did any member of the execution team realize that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had blown and that the pentobarbital was, in whole or in part, entering Ms. Pike’s body,” the motion states. “Instead of remedying this failure, TDOC elected to prepare a backup set of syringes (if they were not also prepared earlier that day) and then administered another lethal dose of pentobarbital.”
Warnings Dismissed, Attorneys Say
Pike’s legal team says they warned the state months in advance that her thrombocytosis, post-traumatic stress disorder, small veins and history of difficult needle insertion made IV complications far more likely. They also warned that improper delivery of pentobarbital could cause “serious illness, needless suffering, and/or prolonged or lingering death.”
“Her concerns were called ‘speculation’; they were laughed off, scoffed at, and dismissed,” the motion states. “In the words of one media witness: we have a lot of questions and the Department of Correction has a lot of answers that it needs to provide to the public about what happened here. We agree.”
The attorneys argue the state now has a legal obligation to preserve everything related to the execution attempt. “In light of the manifest violation of Ms. Pike’s constitutional rights, the actionable nature of that violation, and the reasonable foreseeability of litigation, the Defendants have an affirmative duty to preserve all relevant physical, written, and electronic evidence,” the motion states.
A spokesperson for the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office said: “The governor has appropriately called for an investigation. We need to know what happened.”
The incident follows a separate case in which death row inmate Tony Carruthers will not face execution for at least a year after an IV line failure during his scheduled lethal injection in Tennessee.
