US death row inmate unconscious on ventilator after failed execution

Christa Pike appears in court in Nashville in April 2012. Photo: Dipti Vaidya/Imagn/Reuters

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 disclosed her condition on Friday, two days after Tennessee officials attempted to execute her with two doses of pentobarbital.

The 50-year-old inmate was taken to a hospital in the Nashville area after the execution attempt failed.

Her lawyers, Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen, said she was receiving treatment for the effects of the drug and had suffered significant injuries to both arms.

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

They subsequently filed an emergency motion asking a Nashville court to order the Tennessee Department of Correction to preserve evidence relating to the failed execution.

Pike had been scheduled to die by lethal injection on Wednesday at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

Media witnesses said she appeared to remain alive after the first dose of pentobarbital was administered and that a second dose was subsequently given.

Witnesses also reported hearing Pike breathing and snoring after the drugs had been administered.

The Tennessee Department of Correction, however, said it 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 in a statement.

The agency added that the lethal injection chemical used in the protocol had consistently been effective and that the procedure did not permit additional steps beyond those carried out.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has ordered a third-party review of the incident and halted the state’s next scheduled execution.

Lee said the state needed to determine why the outcome differed from previous executions.

Pike’s lawyers have called for her death sentence to be commuted, arguing that she suffered severe physical trauma during the failed execution.

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They had previously warned courts that Pike had difficulty with intravenous access because of her medical condition and small veins.

The failed execution has also raised questions about what happens legally when a prisoner survives after receiving lethal injection drugs.

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

The case is considered unusual because previous failed lethal-injection executions in the US have generally involved authorities being unable to establish an intravenous line before administering the drugs.

Legal experts cited in US media said Pike’s case is different because the lethal drug was administered, yet she survived.

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

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 also failed to establish an IV 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 he died of COVID-19 in 2020.

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

The state has not announced whether it would seek to schedule another execution after the third-party review.