Christa Pike's lawyer shares update on her condition following botched execution
Death row inmate Christa Pike remains in critical condition after Tennessee officials failed to execute her earlier this week, her lawyer has shared.
The 50-year-old was taken to hospital on Wednesday night (30 September) after officials administered two doses of pentobarbital during an attempted lethal injection at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
Her execution had previously been delayed by a last-minute legal battle after an appeals court granted a stay shortly before she was due to die.
The US Supreme Court later overturned that decision, however, allowing officials to proceed.
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Her attorney, Randy Spivey, said in an update shared on Thursday that the convicted killer was receiving 'lifesaving care' following the botched procedure, but that her legal team had little information about her condition.
"We don't have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment," Spivey said. "But we know she is alive right now."
The failed execution has prompted state Governor Bill Lee to order a third-party review and postpone the state's remaining scheduled execution for 2026.
Pike was 18 when she was sentenced for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old fellow Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer.
She'd been convinced that Slemmer was attempting to steal her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, after which the couple - joined by their friend Shadolla Peterson - lured their victim to an isolated area near the University of Tennessee's Agricultural campus before attacking and killing her.
Having been 17 at the time of the crime, Shipp was given life with the possibility of parole, while Peterson pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact, testified against Pike and Shipp, and received six years' probation.
Following several failed legal battles to have Pike's sentence reduced to life, she was strapped to a gurney this week as execution witnesses watched on.
She had prepared final words and, when asked if she had anything to say, told attendees: "I'm going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life, and that is with love."
The procedure did not go as planned, however - despite Pike's lawyers previously warning that she could be difficult to execute because of a lifelong blood disorder which had previously made it difficult to access her veins.
Steve Ferrell, another one of her lawyers, had warned ahead of the execution that Pike's medical history could make establishing an IV particularly difficult.
"It was quite possible that the IV was not actually in the vein," Ferrell said, explaining that the lethal injection drugs could instead have been going into the tissue in her arm.
"I do know that that really was her biggest fear," Ferrell said. "It was not a fear of dying. It was a fear of a prolonged, painful, traumatic death, and that's what happened minus the death."
"We may never know what all she was suffering through, either because she can't remember it, she can't tell it, or it overwhelms her in such a way that, you know, sometimes pain and suffering affects people that way," he added.
In his update, Spivey said the execution team struggled to find a suitable vein and that he counted at least seven needles in her left arm.
According to him, Pike tried to help the team locate a vein, repeatedly saying: "Please try here, please try here."
"She told them over and over, please try higher on my shoulder," Spivey said.
Eventually, officials administered the lethal injection, but it failed to kill her, after which a second dose was given, yielding the same result.
More than an hour after the execution began, witnesses could still hear her breathing and snoring behind the chamber's curtain.
She was eventually taken to hospital, where her lawyers say she remains.
The team have since called once again for her death sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment, arguing that the execution amounted to torture.
Spivey described the process as 'cruel and tortuous' and said he was 'haunted' by what he witnessed.
Tennessee officials, however, have defended the procedure.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said it 'followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office'.
Governor Lee has also described the failed execution as 'deeply disturbing' and ordered an independent investigation into what happened.
"This is a tragedy. There is no one that wanted what happened last night to happen. It shouldn't have happened," Lee said at a news conference Thursday morning. "There are very few answers this morning. It's very early.
"The people of our state deserve to have those questions answered."
Pike's lawyers say they still do not know what her long-term condition will be.
Topics: True Crime, Crime, US News, News, Real Life
Rhianna Benson