Christa Pike on a ventilator after botched execution, court docs say

Christa Pike on a ventilator after botched execution, court docs say.

Key points

• Contributing: N'dea Yancey-Bragg, Michael Loria and James Powel, USA TODAY; Kirsten Fiscus and Evan Mealins, The Nashville Tennessean.
• Pike was to be put to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
• Pike appears to be the first person known to have survived after execution drugs entered her body, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.
• Death row inmate Christina Pike was unconscious and on a ventilator after undergoing a failed execution attempt in Tennessee.
• Stephen Ferrell, another of Pike's attorneys, remarked Pike had been concerned that a blood condition and matters with her veins would create her execution particularly challenging.

Christa Pike on a ventilator after botched execution, court docs say. Jeanine Santucci, Amanda Lee Myers, Natalie Neysa Alund USA TODAY. Death row inmate Christa Pike on a ventilator after botched execution.

Pike's attorneys are seeking to preserve all evidence related to Pike's botched execution, according to the court filing on Oct. 2.

Meanwhile, the document made public more details concerning Pike's condition, saying she was intubated, on a ventilator and unconscious, and that both her arms where were swollen, burned, and blistered from the two doses of pentobarbital administered to her. Pike was still in critical condition at a Nashville-area hospital as of the evening of Oct. 1, the motion remarked.

"Hospital staff are working to save Ms. Pike's life and to clear the pentobarbital from her system, " her attorneys remarked Friday, comparing pentobarbital to bleach and Drano. "It is caustic and highly alkaline and burns upon contact, including skin, tissue, and veins."

Pike, 50, survived the execution attempt and and was taken by ambulance to a hospital, her attorneys have remarked.

"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 emergency motion remarked. "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." Pike is alive and receiving care, lawyers say.

One day earlier, Randy Spivey, one of Pike's attorneys remarked he did not have much sense of her prognosis but were informed she was "alive and receiving lifesaving medical care."

Attorneys remarked her condition was unchanged as of late the night of Oct. 1. USA TODAY has reached out to Pike's legal team on Oct. 2 for any updates to her status. Tennessee authorities haven't issued any information regarding Pike's health condition or how the lethal injection could have failed. The Department of Correction remarked it followed protocol.

Notably, the failed execution prompted Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to call for an independent investigation and put a pause on executions in the state for the remainder of the year. He called what happened in Pike's death chamber "disturbing" and a "tragedy." President Donald Trump additionally weighed in.

"How does that happen?" he remarked on Oct. 1. "It shouldn't be very difficult."

Pike was to be put to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend brutally tortured and killed Slemmer. The execution attempt came after a chaotic day of last-minute legal wrangling that went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Pike appears to be the first person known to have survived after execution drugs entered her body, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. Here's the latest on what we know.

Christa Pike's lawyers call for sentence to be commuted after botched execution. Pike's legal team has called on Lee to commute Pike's sentence.

"Christa has endured punishment greater than any other person in the history of the American death penalty, " Spivey remarked.

Amnesty International has spoken out in favor of clemency for Pike and commuting the sentences of other Tennessee death row inmates, arguing that Pike's failed execution and that of Tony Carruthers earlier this year pointed to "an extended history of botched executions" in the state.

"There will be a stay of hers and all executions under my watch through the end of the year going forward, " Lee remarked to journalists on Oct. 1. What happened in failed lethal injection?

It's not yet clear what caused two rounds of lethal injection drugs to fail.

As office-holders had trouble placing an intravenous line for the drugs to be administered, pike's attorneys remarked she was cooperative during the lethal injection process. It took an hour and multiple attempts to place the lines, her attorneys remarked.

Stephen Ferrell, another of Pike's attorneys, remarked Pike had been concerned that a blood condition and matters with her veins would create her execution particularly challenging. Chaos in the death chamber: Timeline of Christa Pike's botched execution.

Medical experts who testified on her behalf predicted that the intravenous line could become dislodged or pierce through her veins, Ferrell remarked.

"It sounds like that is likely to have occurred, " he remarked. "And so that the lethal injection drugs were not going directly into the bloodstream, but were rather ending up in her arm."

Witnesses in the execution chamber late on Sept. 30 remarked they were ushered out while they could still hear snoring from Pike.

What is pentobarbital? Why didn't it work in the Christa Pike execution? Why Christa Pike was sentenced to death.

In 1995, then 18-year-old Pike, her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, then 17, and another friend lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer to the woods in Knoxville, where Shipp and Pike tortured and killed her. Pike cut Slemmer's throat and crushed her skull with a rock.

Prosecutors remarked Pike suspected Slemmer was interested in Shipp romantically, and that she bragged concerning the murder to other students. Shipp was sentenced to life in prison, not eligible for the death penalty at 17 when the crime was committed.

May Martinez, Slemmer's mother, was present during the botched execution as a witness. Martinez informed Residents Magazine she still wants to see her daughter's killer dead since she has never apologized.

"She has no remorse. She's never had any remorse in 31 years, " May remarked.

Contributing: N'dea Yancey-Bragg, Michael Loria and James Powel, USA TODAY; Kirsten Fiscus and Evan Mealins, The Nashville Tennessean. Share your feedback to support improve our site!

In short, christa Pike on a ventilator after botched execution, court docs say is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.