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Botched execution leaves murderer unconscious on ventilator
Medics were ‘working to save Ms. Pike’s life after she arrived with both arms swollen, burned and blistered.’
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Convicted US murderer Christa Pike is unconscious and on a ventilator after a botched attempt to execute her by lethal injection, her lawyers said in a court filing Friday.
After a dramatic day of legal wrangling, prison officials in Tennessee on Wednesday injected two deadly doses of the highly toxic drug pentobarbital into Pike for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer.
But witnesses said that the 50-year-old Pike remained awake longer than expected and was later heard “loudly snoring” before an ambulance rushed her to a nearby hospital.
As of Thursday evening, “Ms. Pike remains critically ill and is being treated at a Nashville-area hospital,” her lawyer Luke Ihnen wrote in a filing with a Tennessee court.
“She is intubated, on a ventilator, and remains unconscious,” he added.
The lawyer said medics were “working to save Ms. Pike’s life” after she arrived with both arms “swollen, burned and blistered.”
In a separate filing with a federal appeals court, Pike’s legal team wrote that when the execution had gone awry and they had asked a court to halt it, attorneys for the state argued that the department of corrections “had no obligation to render life-saving care” to Pike.
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, who was among the witnesses, angrily told a local news outlet that the “state owes me a big apology,” and that it had failed her family.
Martinez, who now lives in Florida and raised money to travel to Tennessee, told WJXX television: “All I wanted was justice.”
Execution moratorium
The Tennessee Department of Corrections said earlier this week that it “followed every step of the state’s lawful, established execution protocol.”
But the state’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, who previously denied Pike clemency, halted further executions through the rest of the year while a review is conducted.
Pike’s was the second failed execution in Tennessee this year. The state halted the execution by lethal injection of Tony Carruthers in May after medical staff were unable to tap a vein.
“After having endured solitary confinement for more than 20 years and a full attempt to kill her by lethal injection, Christa has endured punishment greater than any other person in the history of the American death penalty. The governor must commute Christa’s sentence now,” Pike lawyer Randy Spivey said earlier this week.