Tennessee officials tried and failed to execute her this week, prompting outrage and halting executions in the state.
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Lawyers for Christa Pike said Friday that she was placed on a ventilator and was unconscious after Tennessee’s failed attempt this week to execute her by lethal injection.
In a court filing, the attorneys alleged that Tennessee officials failed to follow their own lethal injection protocol while trying to execute Pike with the drug pentobarbital. The execution team acted incompetently and showed “deliberate indifference to her basic medical needs,” they wrote.
As of Thursday night, Pike was hospitalized in the Nashville area, where hospital staff were working to remove pentobarbital from her system, the filing said. She arrived at the hospital with both arms “swollen, burned, and blistered,” according to the lawyers.
The filing offered the most detailed statement about Pike’s medical status since the botched Wednesday evening execution, which prompted a surge of outrage and questions about what went so wrong.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) ordered an investigation into the episode and has halted executions in the state.
Pike had been sentenced to death for her role in killing Colleen Slemmer in 1995, when both of them were teenagers. According to court records, Pike and two other teens lured Slemmer into the woods in Knoxville, Tennessee, where they tortured and killed her.
During the lead-up to her execution, Pike and her attorneys had challenged Tennessee’s lethal injection protocols, saying she faced a risk of severe suffering because of a blood disorder and small veins. Courts rejected her legal challenges.
Pike’s attorneys did not specify what her status was on Friday, including whether she remained unconscious or on a ventilator.
But they repeatedly assailed the team that tried to execute Pike, alleging that its members did not follow Tennessee’s written protocol for lethal injections and showed “reckless disregard of basic medical practices.”
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The attorneys said that the execution team never realized the intravenous lines were not properly placed or “that the pentobarbital was, in whole or in part, entering Ms. Pike’s body” rather than her bloodstream. Then, despite this, officials administered another dose, the attorneys wrote.
Dorinda Carter, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Correction, said Friday: “It is our policy not to comment on pending litigation.”
In a statement after the attempted execution, the agency said it “followed every step of the state’s lawful, established execution protocol.” Lee has said that as far as he knew, the agency followed the state’s approved protocol exactly as outlined.
“The Governor has appropriately called for an investigation,” Jonathan Skrmetti (R), the Tennessee attorney general, said in a statement on Friday. “We need to know what happened.”
A spokesperson for Skrmetti said his office was reviewing the court filing from Pike’s attorneys.
The Friday filing asked for a court order to preserve evidence related to the attempted execution.
An attorney for Pike said in a statement Friday that her legal team was “working closely with those closest to Christa to respect her wishes, safeguard her privacy and protect her rights as a patient during this extraordinarily difficult time.”
Pike’s case had drawn international attention, as she was the only woman on Tennessee’s death row and would have been the first woman executed by that state in more than two centuries.
She had sought clemency, arguing that her history as a victim of sexual assault was not properly considered. Lee rejected that request ahead of the attempted execution.
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