Christa Pike unconscious and on ventilator nearly two days after botched execution, attorneys say

Christa Pike is critically ill, unconscious, intubated and on a ventilator almost two days after her botched execution, her lawyers said Friday.

Hospital staff were working to “save” Pike’s life and “clear the pentobarbital drugs from her system” after she received two doses of a lethal injection in a bungled execution Wednesday night at Riverbend Maximum Security Insтιтution in Nashville, the attorneys revealed in a court filing.

 

Pike’s legal team made grisly new claims in a motion for the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) to “protect and preserve any and all evidence” related to her attempted execution.

“Apparently at no point did any member of the execution team realize 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,” they wrote.

The lawyers argued that instead of “remedying this failure,” Pike’s executioners “administered another lethal dose of pentobarbital.”

In a separate statement to The Post, her lawyers confirmed that “Christa remains hospitalized” and “is critically ill, unconscious, intubated and receiving breathing ᴀssistance through a ventilator.”

Pike, now 50, was sentenced to death for brutally murdering her 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in a jealous rage in Jan. 1995.

In their motion, her lawyers branded TDOC’s actions during the bungled execution “incompetent and reckless.”

“Ms. Pike moves this Court for emergency relief to ensure the preservation of evidence of TDOC inflicting a cruel and unusual punishment on Ms. Pike through its deliberate indifference to her basic medical needs and reckless disregard of basic medical practices and their own lethal injection protocol,” they claimed.

Pike could be heard “crying, whimpering, and breathing loudly throughout the procedure” and one needle used on her was “bent in a 90-degree angle when it was removed,” according to the motion.

When she arrived at the hospital Wednesday night, lawyers said both of her arms were “swollen, burned, and blistered.”

Experts working for Pike compared pentobarbital to bleach or Drano, the filing said, adding that it is “caustic and highly alkaline and burns upon contact, including skin, tissue, and veins.”

Reached for comment on the motion, TDOC communications director, Dorinda Carter, told The Post: “It is our policy to not comment on pending litigation.”

Pike is the first-ever inmate to survive lethal injection, according to an expert who dubbed the botched execution a “singular and unparalleled event.”

Seven other inmates survived medical issues that arose from the execution team’s failure to find a vein, but no one has lived after being given the drugs, Death Penalty Information Center executive director Robin Maher said.

Pike cackled and even sang during the bungled execution, WVLT anchor and senior reporter William Puckett — who was a media witness to the harrowing event — told the Daily Mail.