Christa Pike is in critical condition after Tennessee’s failed execution attempt, her lawyers say

Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike is alive and receiving treatment after she was given two lethal injection doses during a failed execution at a Nashville prison, her attorneys confirmed Thursday. Attorneys for Christa Pike, who survived an attempt by the state of Tennessee to put her to death, say they warned that her execution could be botched in exactly the way it was. Tennessee officials failed to carry out the lethal injection of death row inmate Christa Pike on Wednesday.

Her attorneys say she is alive and in critical condition after being given two separate doses of pentobarbital meant to kill her. Pike was sentenced to death for the gruesome murder of her classmate in 1995. Amna Nawaz discussed more with Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham School of Law.

Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike is in “critical condition, receiving life-saving care” at a hospital after surviving two lethal injection attempts, leading the state’s governor to halt all executions for the year. “We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment,” her lawyer Randy Spivey told reporters on Thursday. “But we do know that she is alive right now.” Her lawyers are now asking for her sentence to be commuted.

Pike, 50, was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of Colleen Slemmer. She was injected with two lethal doses of pentobarbital on Wednesday but remained alive, her lawyers said. She was then sent to hospital in an ambulance.

Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and killed 19-year-old Slemmer. Her attempted execution on Wednesday was the subject of a last-minute legal battle. This culminated in the US Supreme Court allowing the lethal injections to go ahead.

Slemmer’s mother May Martinez, who was among those who wanted the execution to take place and who travelled to Tennessee to witness it, told NBC News after the botched attempt that “it was a mess”. On Thursday afternoon, Pike’s lawyers offered more details about what happened during the attempted execution, describing a harrowing scene shrouded in secrecy. “Last night, the execution team attempted to establish an IV line for an hour,” Spivey said.