Convicted murderer Christa Pike is unconscious and on a ventilator after Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute her, with lawyers saying she remains in a critical condition two days after the lethal injection.
Hospital staff are treating the 50-year-old and attempting to remove the drug pentobarbital from her system, according to an emergency court filing submitted by her legal team on Friday.
The filing seeks an order requiring Tennessee’s Department of Correction to preserve evidence relating to Wednesday night’s botched execution. Pike’s lawyers said she had suffered significant injuries to both arms.
They alleged that the intravenous lines had not been correctly placed and that the veins had ruptured, preventing the drug from being administered as intended.
“At no point did any member of the execution team realise that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had blown and that the pentobarbital was, in whole or in part, entering Ms. Pike’s body,” the lawyers said in the filing.
The account gives the clearest description so far of the medical consequences of the failed execution. Pike’s lawyers had warned the state and the courts before the procedure that intravenous access could be a problem.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee said the execution had followed the state’s established protocol. It was the second botched execution in the state this year, and Mr Lee has halted further state killings for the remainder of 2026 while an independent review is carried out.
Pike was convicted of killing her 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in 1995, when Pike was 18. She had been due to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries.
