Christa Pike on a ventilator and unconscious after failed Tennessee execution, attorneys say

Christa Pike was placed on a ventilator and remained unconscious in a hospital in the hours after her failed execution in Tennessee, her attorneys said in a court filing Friday.

Hospital staff, her lawyers said, were working to save Pike’s life and as of late Thursday were trying to clear the two doses of the drug that the state uses to execute prisoners.

The stunning failure in Tennessee’s execution chamber on Wednesday has left both sides of the death penalty debate demanding answers. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has ordered an independent review.

The court filing offered the first detailed account of Pike’s condition after an ambulance carried her away from Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Wednesday night. Her attorneys said a day earlier that she was in critical condition.

Christa Pike’s attorneys point to problems with the IV

Pike’s attorneys said they believed problems with the IV lines caused the pentobarbital to flow into her body instead of her bloodstream.

“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,” they wrote in the court filing.

Instead of “remedying this failure,” they prepared and administered a second dose of pentobarbital, her lawyers said.

State officials have not offered any explanations about what went wrong.

Tennessee leaders want a review of execution methods

Lee demanded a review of the execution procedures and indefinitely postponed Pike’s execution and another that had been scheduled for this year. Republican Tennessee lawmakers said the state should review whether to stop single-drug lethal injections and consider other options to carry out death sentences.

The execution team worked for an hour to administer the lethal drugs, said Pike’s defense lawyer Randy Spivey, who counted at least seven needles in her left arm.

Neither the initial nor the backup dose of pentobarbital worked. Pike was still snoring when the execution chamber’s microphone was cut off more than an hour into the attempt.

Pike’s attorneys asked a state court to order the Tennessee Department of Correction to preserve all evidence from the failed execution.

“Preserving this evidence is essential to understanding what happened, ensuring accountability and protecting Christa’s legal rights,” two of her attorneys said in a statement.

She was 18 when she and her boyfriend tortured and killed a classmate in a jealous rage. She later became one of the youngest women to be sent to death row.

Following the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, her attorneys said.

“It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime,” Pike said in an earlier clemency petition.

The mother of the 19-year-old woman Pike killed expressed frustration over the failed execution. “I didn’t get justice for my daughter,” Maya Martinez said Thursday.

Problems found with executions four years ago

Four years ago, Tennessee’s governor ordered another independent review into capital punishment after abruptly stopping the April 2022 execution of Oscar Smith. Lee then paused all executions after acknowledging the state had failed to ensure its lethal injection drugs were properly tested.

Months later, a report found the state hadn’t complied with its own lethal injection process since its revision in 2018, resulting in executions being conducted without proper testing of the drugs.

At the time, the state used a three-drug execution protocol of midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride. The state later switched to using just pentobarbital.

Pentobarbital has been used to carry out death sentences in multiple states and by the federal government.

The review, led by former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton, also found that the state’s unidentified executioner had no formal healthcare training and learned the role mainly through on-the-job experience.

After the release of the report, the Tennessee Department of Correction fired its longtime top attorney and another employee.

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Associated Press writer John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.

Kim Chandler And Jamie Stengle, The Associated Press