Christa Pike in critical condition after Tennessee's failed execution attempt

NASHVILLE: Christa Pike was in critical condition Thursday and receiving “lifesaving care” at a hospital, her lawyers said, a day after a failed attempt to execute her pushed Tennessee's governor to halt further executions this year and order an independent review.

Pike, who was sentenced to death for a 1995 murder, was taken to a hospital Wednesday night after surviving a double dose of the drug Tennessee uses to execute prisoners.

“We don't have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment,” attorney Randy Spivey said during a news conference. “But we know she is alive right now.”

The failed execution, which one death penalty expert described as unprecedented, led Republican Gov. Bill Lee to order a review, calling what happened “deeply disturbing” and indefinitely postponing Pike's execution and another one that had been scheduled for this year. It also reignited the debate over the state's execution procedures, including its single-drug lethal injections.

Spivey called the process cruel and torturous, saying he was “haunted” by watching and hearing Pike talking, singing and then snoring loudly during her more than 90 minutes in the death chamber. Her attorneys also said it was unclear if she might have suffered brain damage from being deprived of oxygen.

May Martinez, whose daughter was murdered by Pike and her boyfriend and who travelled to Nashville to watch the execution, was also upset.

“I didn't get justice for my daughter,” Martinez told The Associated Press on Thursday.

“I watched the whole thing. She was awake. She was laughing. She was moving her head, moving her feet. She was trying to sit up,” Martinez said. “Didn't work the first time they gave her a shot. It didn't work the second time.”

A prolonged attempt ends in failure

It was not immediately clear what went wrong. Pike's attorneys said there were a number of possibilities.

The execution team worked for an hour to administer the lethal drugs, said Spivey, who counted at least seven needles in her left arm.

During the struggle to locate a vein, Pike even suggested where they might find one, he said.

“Please try here, please try here,” Spivey recalled her saying. “She told them over and over, please try higher on my shoulder.”

At one point Pike asked prison officials if her arm was supposed to feel that way, though it's unclear if it was after the first dose entered her body because officials don't share that information.

Neither the initial nor the backup dose of pentobarbital worked. Pike was still snoring when the execution chamber's microphone was cut off more than an hour into the attempt.

Another Pike attorney, Steve Ferrell, said she feared there would be complications 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,” he said.

It was quite possible, Ferrell said, that the IV line didn't enter her vein properly and the drug was filling her arm instead of entering her bloodstream.

Lee said it appeared prison staff followed procedure.

Attorneys seek commutation

Pike's lawyers now want her death sentence to be commuted. Now age 50, she was sentenced to death for a murder she committed at 18. She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

An appeals court had stopped her execution an hour before it was scheduled to begin Wednesday morning, but the US Supreme Court overturned that stay hours later.

It was the second time this year that the state was unable to complete an execution. In the other case, officials couldn't find a suitable vein for an IV line so the drugs weren't administered

Pentobarbital, the barbiturate Tennessee uses for executions, has been used to carry out death sentences in multiple states and by the federal government. But concerns have been raised about the potential for “unnecessary pain and suffering.”

Dr. Ervin Yen, an Oklahoma City anesthesiologist who has no link to Pike's execution but has witnessed others, said it's possible that if the prison staff was using a small vein, there could have been some burning, as mentioned by Pike's attorneys.

“It just depends on the vein that you're injecting it in and how fast you are injecting,” Yen said.

Awake in the death chamber

Strapped to a gurney, Pike described herself as at peace and said “I'm ready to be free. ... This is a happy day.”

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

An hour after officials first raised the curtains, witnesses reported that a second dose of pentobarbital was administered. Pike could still be heard snoring behind a closed curtain until the microphone was cut off almost 30 minutes later.

Her lawyers 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.

Pike acknowledged her role in the killing

Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of the fatal stabbing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a classmate. The killing stoked fears of Satan worship because of a pentagram carved on Slemmer's body.

She didn't dispute that she helped kill Slemmer, but supporters argued that her mental illness and allegations of severe sexual abuse should be considered. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder after the killing.

“It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I'd done,” she once said.