US death row inmate remains unconscious after failed execution

Christa Pike, a death row inmate in Tennessee, United States, remains unconscious and on a ventilator after surviving an attempted lethal injection, CNN reports.

Pike’s lawyers said on Friday that the 50-year-old was being treated at a hospital in the Nashville area, two days after state officials attempted to execute her with two doses of pentobarbital.

Her lawyers, Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen, said Pike suffered significant injuries to both arms during the failed execution.

“She is being treated for the serious effects of the pentobarbital administered during the execution attempt, including significant injuries to both arms,” they said in a statement.

The lawyers have also filed an emergency motion asking a Nashville court to order the Tennessee Department of Correction to preserve evidence connected to the execution attempt.

Pike was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

Media witnesses reported that she appeared to remain alive after the first dose of pentobarbital was administered, prompting officials to give her a second dose.

Witnesses also said they heard Pike breathing and snoring after the drugs had been administered.

The Tennessee Department of Correction maintained that officials followed the state’s approved execution procedure.

“The Tennessee Department of Correction followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office,” the department said.

The agency said the lethal-injection chemical used under the protocol had consistently been effective and that the procedure did not allow additional steps beyond those carried out.

Following the incident, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee ordered a third-party review and suspended the state’s next scheduled execution.

Lee said the review would seek to determine why the outcome differed from previous executions.

Pike’s lawyers have asked that her death sentence be commuted, arguing that she suffered severe physical trauma during the failed execution. They had previously warned courts that she had difficulty with intravenous access because of her medical condition and small veins.

The case has also raised legal questions over whether authorities can attempt another execution after a prisoner survives an injection in which lethal drugs were administered.

Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow Job Corps worker. She was convicted in 1996 after being found guilty of killing Slemmer in a remote area of the University of Tennessee Agricultural campus.

Pike was 18 when she committed the crime.

Her scheduled execution would have made her the first woman executed by Tennessee in more than 200 years.

The case differs from several previous failed lethal-injection executions in the United States, where authorities were unable to establish an intravenous line before administering the drugs.

There is historical precedent for prisoners surviving failed execution attempts and later facing another execution.

In 1947, 16-year-old Willie Francis survived an electric-chair execution in Louisiana after a malfunction. The US Supreme Court later rejected his challenge to a second execution, and he was executed the following year.

In 2009, Ohio officials failed to establish an intravenous line while attempting to execute Romell Broom. The Ohio Supreme Court later ruled that a second execution would not violate the US Constitution’s protection against double jeopardy. Broom remained on death row until his death from COVID-19 in 2020.

Pike’s lawyers are now seeking to preserve evidence from the failed execution as her medical and legal future remains uncertain.

The Tennessee authorities have not announced whether they will seek to schedule another execution after the third-party review.