Christa Pike, the convicted murderer whom Tennessee tried and failed to execute, was in the hospital receiving life-saving care on Thursday, her lawyers revealed.
Pike is the only person ever to survive lethal injection, and is now in critical condition and may have suffered brain damage, attorney Randy Spivey said.
The all-female execution squad injected her two times Wednesday night with the sedative pentobarbital — with each dose meant to be fatal.
Pike, 50, was set to become the first woman executed in Tennessee for over 200 years but was instead rushed to Vanderbilt University Hospital from the Riverbend Maximum Security Insтιтution in Nashville after the botched execution attempt.
“What we have been told is that she is in critical condition, receiving lifesaving care,” her attorney Randy Spivey told a press conference.
It was unclear Thursday whether she could face execution again.
Spivey called for Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) –– who announced a halt on executions and a “comprehensive, third-party review” after the second failed execution in the state this year –– to commute Pike’s sentence for the savage torture murder she committed in a jealous rage in 1995.
“The governor’s call for an independent review does not go far enough,” Spivey said in response.
“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.
Meanwhile, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who is the GOP nominee to become the Volunteer State’s next governor, called for Tennessee to bring back the electric chair for executions.
“While there should be a thorough review of what happened and why the process failed, the answer is simple: bring back the electric chair and deliver justice for these victims swiftly,” Blackburn wrote on social media.
“As your governor, I will do just that.”
Pike was strapped to the table for an hour as medical staff jabbed her with at least seven needles, one of which was bent when it came out of her arm, according to her attorneys.
In a previous statement on Wednesday, Pike’s legal team blamed the fiasco on “difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy.”
“My arm feels like it’s about to bust. One spot is really throbbing,” Pike said, according to witness Tori Gessner, a reporter with WKRN.
Pike’s legal team claimed she had even tried to help her executioners perform their grim task after expressing fears previously that they would have difficulty with the injection.
“It took an hour despite the fact that Ms. Pike was not just cooperative, but was trying to help instruct the people placing the IV lines where they could find them (her veins),” Stephen Ferrell of the Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee said.
“She over and over again said ‘Please try up on my shoulder higher. Please try here, I think it will be okay.’”
Ferrell said Pike’s history of Sєxual abuse would have made the ordeal even more horrific.
“That was her biggest fear as the survivor of Sєxual abuse, that she would be pinned down, prodded, poked, cut, for a prolonged period of time” he said.
Pike’s execution had been due to take place at 10 a.m. CDT but with just an hour to go, the Court of Appeals ordered a stay in relation to Pike’s claim that Sєxual abuse and rape she suffered as a child was not properly considered when she was sentenced.
The US Supreme Court lifted the stay on Wednesday evening, clearing the way for her execution.
Tennessee changed from its previous three-drug lethal injection protocol to a single drug, pentobarbital, in 2024.
It came two years after the state admitted it had failed to test its legal injection drugs properly.
In May, the execution of Tony Carruthers –– a death row inmate convicted of a triple kidnapping and murder in Memphis in 1994 –– also had to be halted in Tennessee.
Carruthers’ sister filed a complaint with the Tennessee Department of Health in July against the doctor who attempted to administer the lethal injection.
The complaint claimed Carruthers suffered excruciating pain and been left partially paralyzed due to a stroke.
Pike murdered her 19-year-old Jobs Corps classmate Colleen Slemmer in a fit of jealousy in Jan. 1995 because she believed the victim was trying to steal her boyfriend, prosecutors said.
The then 18-year-old, her 17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and her friend Shadolla Peterson, also 18, lured Slemmer to an isolated area of the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville campus to torture and kill her.
Peterson acted as a lookout while Pike and Shipp carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest with a boxcutter, beat her with a meat cleaver and repeatedly slashed her throat while she pleaded in vain for her life.
At the end of the horrific ordeal, which investigators said lasted at least half an hour, Pike murdered Slemmer by bashing her head in with a large chunk of asphalt and then kept a piece of her skull as a souvenir.
Pike was sentenced to death following her trial in 1996, while Shipp was sentenced to life in prison because he was a juvenile at the time and Peterson received probation for being an accessory after testifying against the pair.
While on death row, pike was further convicted of attempting to murder a fellow inmate by strangling her with a shoestring in August 2001 and had 25 years tacked onto her sentence.
Then, in March 2012, a plot to spring her from the Tennessee Prison for Women in Nashville, involving a corrections officer and a New Jersey personal trainer who Pike was in a relationship with, was thwarted.
The last woman to be executed in Tennessee was Martin Eve, who was charged with being an accessory to murder and executed by hanging in 1820, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.