Christa Pike in critical condition after failed execution in Tennessee, lawyers say

Christa Pike shouldn’t be breathing anymore. She survived two lethal drug injections during a botched and harrowing execution by the state of Tennessee, raising questions about how the procedure was carried out and why it went wrong.

Nearly 24 hours after Pike was put to death for a murder she committed when she was 18, she remains in critical condition and is receiving treatment, her lawyers said Thursday afternoon. His prognosis is unclear, said Randall Spivey, one of his attorneys. Neither he nor another lawyer, Stephen Ferrell, who spoke to reporters, said they saw her at the hospital.

“Last night haunts me,” said Spivey, who was present during the attempted execution.

Spivey said he counted at least seven needles used in Pike’s left arm alone, “one of which appeared bent when it was removed from his arm after a failed attempt.”

He said Pike’s right arm turned purple after administering the second round of pentobarbital, a sedative used in Tennessee’s execution protocol. Pike’s lawyers said they also learned of “blisters and burns around the injection sites.”

The description sheds additional light on what happened inside the execution chamber as the execution team attempted to put 50-year-old Pike to death. After the theater curtain opened at 7:26 p.m., a media witness said, Pike complained that “my arm felt like it was about to split open.”

Other media witnesses said Pike was complaining that one spot was “really throbbing” and that she was kicking so often that she hit a sheet that was placed on top of her.

She continued to snore, moan and move around even though the drugs were presumed to have taken effect, witnesses said.

Five minutes after the second dose, “it was clear that Miss Pike was still breathing,” Spivey said.

He said he did not see any life-saving care given to Pike when he was able to witness the events, but that there was a time before witnesses were brought outside when no one could see what was happening. Medical care was provided in an ambulance called at 8:50 p.m. to the Nashville prison where the executions took place.

“Last night was not only ineffective; it was cruel and torturous,” Spivey said.

Medical experts told NBC News that Pike’s injuries could be consistent with the drug not entering his bloodstream directly but ending up in surrounding tissues due to improper insertion or leakage.

If that happened, it would mean less medication would enter her circulatory system, keeping her breathing and moving rather than becoming deeply comatose before death, said Dr. Jonathan Groner, professor emeritus of clinical surgery at the Ohio State University College of Medicine.

Burning around the injection site could also indicate that the medication is not properly injected into a vein, he added.

“I’ve seen partial-thickness burns appear red or purple,” Groner said.

Ferrell said he believed “a number of factors” could explain the failed execution, but he added that based on what medical experts told their team about Pike’s difficult veins, it appears the IV line may have leaked.

This happens when a misplaced needle deposits medicine in the arm instead of circulating it in the bloodstream. This, he said, would be consistent with Pike’s complaints that his arm hurt during the process and that he felt like it was “about to explode.”

Spivey described the vein problems Pike had throughout his life, noting problems with typical blood tests. That’s part of the reason she feared this method of execution and why she requested a different method, the attorneys said.

“I know that was really his biggest fear,” Ferrell said. “It wasn’t the fear of dying. It was the fear of a prolonged, painful, traumatic death, and that’s what happened without death.”

Spivey said he was given an emergency number that the Tennessee Supreme Court could call if there was a problem with the execution, but when he called it he was directed to voicemail.

Pike’s lawyers have since appealed his execution. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has suspended his execution until an independent investigation reveals what happened Wednesday.

“It’s a tragedy. Nobody wanted what happened last night to happen. It shouldn’t have happened,” Lee said at a news conference Thursday morning.

He declined to elaborate on Pike’s condition and said he would hire a team to investigate the circumstances surrounding the failure.

Spivey said of Lee: “I hope he cares, because it’s as a citizen of Tennessee. It’s something that’s been done in all of our names.”

This is the second time this year that an execution has not gone as planned in Tennessee. Tony Carruthers, convicted of three murders in 1994, was given a one-year reprieve after executioners failed to find a vein for a backup IV in May.

Many questions remain in Pike’s case: Was she in pain when this happened? Will she remember what happened? Will there be long-term damage? Ferrell said he doesn’t have the answers.

“We may never know what she was suffering from, either because she doesn’t remember it, or because she can’t say it, or because it overwhelms her to the point that, you know, sometimes pain and suffering affects people in that way,” he added.

Pike’s conviction stems from a 1995 murder case in which Pike and two other teenage accomplices worked together to torture, slash and beat to death Colleen Slemmer, Knoxville police said at the time. Pike was convicted of Slemmer’s death and sentenced to death; she was on death row for decades.

A number of last-minute efforts to prevent the execution failed. Pike was to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.