Tennessee inmate remains unconscious after failed lethal injection
Christa Pike remains unconscious on a ventilator after Tennessee officials administered two doses of pentobarbital during an unsuccessful execution attempt, her lawyers said. They are seeking to preserve evidence and have asked for her death sentence to be commuted, while Governor Bill Lee has ordered an independent review and paused the state’s next execution.
Christa Pike, a death row inmate in Tennessee, remains unconscious and on a ventilator after surviving an attempted lethal injection, according to her lawyers. She was taken to a hospital in the Nashville area after the execution attempt failed on Wednesday. Pike’s lawyers, Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen, said on Friday that she was being treated for the effects of pentobarbital, the drug used during the procedure.
They said she had suffered significant injuries to both arms. The lawyers have filed an emergency motion asking a Nashville court to require the Tennessee Department of Correction to preserve evidence from the execution attempt. They have also called for Pike’s death sentence to be commuted, arguing that she experienced severe physical trauma.
Pike was scheduled to be executed at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Media witnesses said she appeared to remain alive after the first dose was administered, prompting officials to give a second dose. Witnesses also reported hearing her breathe and snore afterward.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said it followed the state’s approved procedure. The department said the chemical used had consistently been effective and that the protocol did not allow additional steps beyond those carried out. Governor Bill Lee has ordered a third-party review and halted Tennessee’s next scheduled execution.
He said the state needed to establish why the result differed from previous executions. The state has not announced whether it will seek to schedule another execution for Pike after the review. Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow Job Corps worker.
She was convicted in 1996. Pike was 18 when she committed the crime, and her planned execution would have made her the first woman executed by Tennessee in more than two centuries. Her lawyers had previously warned courts that she had difficulty with intravenous access because of her medical condition and small veins.
The case has prompted questions about the legal consequences of an execution in which lethal drugs were administered but the prisoner survived. Previous failed executions cited in US legal history involved either equipment failure or an inability to establish an intravenous line before the drugs were given.
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