Christa Pike: Teen killer alive and receiving ‘lifesaving care’ day after botched execution failed

Christa Pike remains alive and is receiving “lifesaving care” at a hospital, her lawyers say, a day after she survived a failed attempt to execute her for a murder in 1995 during what Tennessee’s governor called a “deeply disturbing” incident.

Pike is in critical condition at the hospital where she was taken after Wednesday night’s failed execution but her lawyers said they did not know specifics of how she is faring.

“Christa is alive right now. We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment,” lawyer Randy Spivey said during a news conference.

“But we know she is alive right now and receiving live-saving medical care.”

Lawyer Steve Ferrell said Pike feared there would be complications with the lethal injection because of a lifelong blood disorder that made it tough to get needles into her veins.

“Throughout her life, she’s explained to us that she had trouble having blood drawn,” Ferrell said.

Spivey said he counted at least seven needles that were used in her left arm alone.

“Ms Pike was not just co-operative but was helping to instruct the people placing the IV lines as to where they might put them,” Spivey said.

“She told them over and over, please try higher on my shoulder.”

Pike’s lawyers said the failed execution amounted to “torture” and they called for her death sentence to be commuted.

The state tried to execute Pike by lethal injection but neither the initial nor backup dose of pentobarbital killed her and she was still snoring when the execution chamber’s microphone was cut off more than an hour into the attempt.

She was later taken to a hospital for treatment.

At one point during Wednesday night’s execution attempt, she asked prison officials if her arm was supposed to feel that way although it is unclear if it was after the first dose entered her body, as officials do not share that information.

Later, more than an hour after the process began and nearly 30 minutes after a backup dose of pentobarbital was administered, she could be heard snoring loudly.

On Thursday, Governor Bill Lee indefinitely postponed Pike’s execution and Tennessee’s lone remaining one that had been scheduled for this year.

He also ordered an independent review of what happened, calling it “deeply disturbing”.

But Pike’s lawyers said such a review would be insufficient.

Pike was 18 in January 1995 when she, her 17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and a third companion lured Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old classmate at their Knoxville Job Corps vocational centre, into a wooded area where they tortured and killed her.

Pike and Shipp confessed to the killing and both were convicted of first-degree murder.

An appeals court stopped the lethal injection an hour before it was scheduled to begin but the US Supreme Court overturned that stay hours later.

May Martinez, whose daughter was murdered by Pike and her boyfriend and who travelled to Nashville to watch the execution, told NBC News that “it was a mess”.

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

Strapped to a gurney in the execution chamber, Pike described herself as at peace.

When asked if she had any last words, Pike said several things, including, “I’m at peace. I’m ready to be free ... This is a happy day.”

But she remained awake, and at one point complained about the feeling in her arm.

The chamber’s curtains were closed, suggesting it had been five minutes since the first dose was administered.

But they were reopened three minutes later.

An hour after officials first raised the curtains, witnesses reported that a second dose of pentobarbital was administered.

Lawyers for Pike filed an emergency motion with the Tennessee Supreme Court seeking to immediately halt and stay the execution, saying she was in “unnecessary agony” and the procedure violated her right to be executed free of cruel and unusual punishment.