Christa Pike is in critical condition one day after a failed execution attempt in Tennessee.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – Christine Pike was in critical condition Thursday and receiving “life-saving care” at a hospital, his lawyers said, a day later an unsuccessful execution attempt she pushed the governor of Tennessee to put an end to executions this year and order an independent review.

Pike, who was sentenced to death for murder in 1995was taken to the hospital Wednesday night after surviving a double dose of the drug Tennessee uses to execute prisoners.

“We have no information on his prognosis or his health at this time,” attorney Randy Spivey said at a news conference. “But we know she’s alive right now.”

The failed execution, which one death penalty expert called unprecedented, led Republican Gov. Bill Lee to order a review, calling what happened “deeply troubling” and to indefinitely postpone Pike’s execution and another planned for this year. It also reignited debate over state execution procedures, including single-drug lethal injections.

Spivey called the process cruel and tortuous, saying he was “haunted” watching and hearing Pike speak, sing and then snore loudly for more than 90 minutes in the death chamber. Her lawyers also said it was unclear whether she may have suffered brain damage from a lack of oxygen.

May Martinez, whose daughter was murdered by Pike and her boyfriend and who traveled to Nashville to watch the execution, was also distraught.

“I didn’t get justice for my daughter,” Martinez told The Associated Press on Thursday.

“I looked at everything. She was awake. She was laughing. She was moving her head, moving her feet. She was trying to sit up,” Martinez said. “It didn’t work the first time they gave him an injection. It didn’t work the second time.”

A prolonged attempt ends in failure

It was not immediately clear what was wrong. Pike’s lawyers said there were a number of possibilities.

The execution team worked for an hour to administer the deadly drugs, said Spivey, who counted at least seven needles in his left arm.

During the struggle to locate a vein, Pike even suggested where they might find one, he said.

“Please try here, please try here,” Spivey remembers him saying. “She told them over and over again, please try higher on my shoulder.”

At one point, Pike asked prison officials if his arm was supposed to feel that way, although it’s unclear if it was after the first dose entered his body because officials don’t share that information.

Neither the initial nor the rescue dose of pentobarbital work. Pike was still snoring when the execution chamber microphone was cut off more than an hour after the attempt began.

Another attorney for Pike, Steve Ferrell, said she feared there would be complications because of a lifelong blood disorder that made it difficult to insert needles into her veins. “Throughout her life, she told us she had difficulty getting blood drawn,” he said.

It was entirely possible, Ferrell said, that the IV line had not entered his vein properly and that the medication was filling his arm instead of entering his bloodstream.

Lee said it appeared prison staff followed procedure.

Lawyers call for commutation

Pike’s lawyers now want his death sentence commuted. Now aged 50, she was sentenced to death for a murder she committed when she was 18. She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

An appeals court had halted his execution an hour before it was scheduled to begin Wednesday morning, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that stay hours later.

It was the second time this year that the state unable to complete an execution. In the other case, authorities could not find a suitable vein for an IV line and so the drugs were not administered.

PentobarbitalThe barbiturate that Tennessee uses for executions has been used to carry out death sentences in several states and by the federal government. But concerns have been raised about the potential for “unnecessary pain and suffering”.

Dr. Ervin Yen, an Oklahoma City anesthesiologist who has no connection to Pike’s execution but has witnessed other executions, said it was possible that if prison staff used a small vein there would have been burns, as Pike’s lawyers have mentioned.

“It just depends on which vein you inject it into and how fast you inject it,” Yen said.

The state changed its method of execution two years ago

In 2024, Tennessee I came off a course of three medications. for lethal injections of a single drug, pentobarbital. This occurred about two years after the state abruptly halted Oscar Smith’s execution and admitted that he had failed to ensure his lethal injection drugs had been tested correctly.

Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said what Pike experienced is “singular and unprecedented” in that she survived long enough to be transferred to a hospital.

Seven others survived medical problems caused by the execution team’s inability to access a vein to administer lethal injection drugs, but no one remained alive after receiving the drugs used in the executions, she said.

Executions in the United States have declined sharply since the start of this century, but the number almost doubled last year, behind a record increase in Florida.

Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the United States this year.

Awakened in the death chamber

Strapped to a gurney, Pike described herself as being at peace and said: “I’m ready to be free… It’s a happy day.” »

But she stayed awake and, at one point, complained of a feeling in her arm.

An hour after authorities first raised the curtains, witnesses reported that a second dose of pentobarbital had been administered. Pike could still be heard snoring behind a closed curtain until the microphone was cut off nearly 30 minutes later.

Her attorneys filed an emergency motion with the Tennessee Supreme Court to immediately halt and stay the execution, saying she was suffering “unnecessary agony” and that the procedure violated her right to be executed without cruel and unusual punishment.

Pike admitted his role in the murder

Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of the fatal shooting of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a classmate. The killing stoked fears of Satan worship because of a pentagram carved into Slemmer’s body.

She has not disputed helping to kill Slemmer, but her supporters have argued that her mental illness and allegations of serious sexual abuse should be taken into account. After the murder, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“It took me many years to realize the gravity of what I had done,” she once said.

___

This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Randy Spivey’s last name.

___

Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, Ed White in Detroit, Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, Hallie Golden in Seattle, Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.