Christa Pike unconscious after failed execution — attorneys
Christa Pike has been on death row ever since she was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of Colleen Slemmer. [File: 2007]Image: J. Miles Cary/Knoxville News Sentinel/USA TODAY NETWORK/REUTERSAdvertisementChrista Pike was unconscious and on a ventilator in a Nashville hospital in the hours after her bungled execution attempt in Tennessee, her attorneys said in a court filing on Friday.
Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, was audibly snoring after she was injected with two doses of lethal injection on Wednesday.
The court filing is the first account of what Pike went through in the hours after the botched execution attempt.
Pike's attorneys said they believed problems with the IV lines caused the lethal drug, called 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.
There are now questions about what happens next and whether the state can attempt to execute Pike again given her medical state.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, a Republican, temporarily paused the state execution on Thursday, saying there would be a "comprehensive, third-party review" of the case.
Pike, who is 50 years old, was set to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years.
She is believed to be the first person to survive after being injected with lethal doses of execution drugs in the modern era of the death penalty, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
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