The first-ever inmate to survive lethal injection after Tennessee’s botched execution on Wednesday is now in critical condition on a ventilator.
“Christa remains hospitalized… critically ill, unconscious, intubated, and receiving breathing assistance through a ventilator,” her lawyers told The New York Post on Friday.
Christa Pike, 50, was convicted of murdering her 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer, whom she killed as a teen in 1995. Pike reportedly tortured Slemmer and slit her throat. She was put on death row in 1996, and 30 years later, the Tennessee Supreme Court set her execution for Sept. 30.
Pike’s lawyers had warned that difficult IV access, blown veins, and potentially degraded pentobarbital could cause a botched, agonizing execution.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s office pushed the execution forward anyway and asked the Supreme Court to lift the Sixth Circuit stay. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority ultimately vacated the stay.
At the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Wednesday, Pike was given two injections because the first didn’t work. She was described as “crying, whimpering, and breathing loudly throughout the procedure,” and one needle used on her was “bent in a 90-degree angle when it was removed,” according to a motion by her lawyers to preserve evidence.
She was then rushed to the hospital with her arms “swollen, burned, and blistered,” her lawyers said. Hospital staff worked to save her life and “clear the pentobarbital drugs from her system,” according to her lawyers’ emergency filing in Davidson County Chancery Court.
The team claimed that after the first injection failed, “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.”
Reporters asked President Donald Trump in Texas on Thursday about the botched execution, and whether or not he’ll seek change for capital punishments such as Pike’s.
“That was an interesting situation, but you’re going to have to speak to Tennessee about it—whether or not they’re going to go forward,” he said.
Trump was joined by former White House Doctor Ronny Jackson, who he suggested was better qualified to talk about what had happened in Tennessee.
“How does that happen? Should be easy to do. It shouldn’t be very difficult,” Trump said.
