Christa Pike has remained unconscious and on a ventilator at a hospital in the four days since her failed execution in Tennessee, and her prognosis might not be known for days more, one of her lawyers said Sunday.
Little has been released about Pike’s condition since Wednesday night’s execution attempt. She has since remained hospitalized under guard as doctors try to get the massive dose of the barbiturate pentobarbital out of her system.
When asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” whether Pike ever regained consciousness after the execution attempt, her lawyer Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said, “Not that I am aware of.”
Medical decisions made by others
Pike, now 50, was 18 when she and her boyfriend tortured and killed a classmate, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, in a jealous rage in 1995. She became one of the youngest women to be sent to death row.
Tennessee prison officials gave Pike two doses of the lethal injection drug on Wednesday night. The pentobarbital didn’t kill her, but her lawyers said her arms were burned and blistered from the caustic drugs.
Pike gave someone her medical power of attorney and that person is protecting her privacy, Ferrell said.
“I’m not sure what all they may have told that person,” Ferrell said.
Pike’s attorneys have not identified who is making Pike’s medical decisions. They said they may not know for several more days whether or not she can recover.
“We don’t know right now, and we may never know what sort of torture she endured during that process, where her consciousness was, what physical pain there was — what mental torture she went through,” Ferrell said.
A spokeswoman for Pike’s defense team said in a statement early Sunday that “we appreciate all respect for Christa’s rightful privacy.”
Records sought from prison authorities
Pike’s execution was delayed for more than eight hours Wednesday as the U.S. Supreme Court considered, and ultimately overturned, a federal appeals court ruling to halt her lethal injection so judges could review whether the jury that sentenced her to death should have considered sexual abuse she said she suffered as a child.
Her attorneys asked a court Friday to order Tennessee prison officials to preserve any written records, communication, images or video from the execution.
Tennessee, like many other states with capital punishment, keeps many details about executions secret, including how the drugs are manufactured and obtained, and any tests done on their quality.
“The state of Tennessee has got to start telling its people exactly what it is doing so that in the democratic process, the people of Tennessee can decide if that’s what they want to be done in their name,” Ferrell told CNN.
A pattern of execution problems
This was the second time this year Tennessee has not been able to execute a prisoner who was seemingly moments away from death. In May, Tennessee stopped the execution of Tony Carruthers after staff placed an IV into his right arm but couldn’t get a secondary IV line.
Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada announced Saturday he was resigning.
Gov. Bill Lee has ordered an independent investigation into the state’s capital punishment system conducted by former U.S. Atty. Ed Stanton. Stanton also reviewed Tennessee’s procedures after Lee called off a different execution in 2022 and found the state did not comply with its own lethal injection process.
Prison officials and the Tennessee attorney general’s office have said little since Pike was taken to the hospital.
Future of Pike’s case unclear
If Pike recovers, it is unclear what will happen in her death penalty case. Pike’s lawyers have asked the governor to commute her punishment to a life sentence.
Pike didn’t deny she killed Slemmer more than three decades ago. The two were classmates at Knoxville Job Corps.
Prosecutors said Pike feared Slemmer was a romantic rival and lured her to a secluded area where she and her boyfriend slashed Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. The case got widespread attention because of the brutality of the killing, the ages of the people involved and because a satanic symbol was carved into the victim’s body.
Collins writes for the Associated Press.
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