Christa Pike remained in critical condition at a Nashville hospital on Thursday after surviving a botched execution that resulted from what her lawyers said was the state of Tennessee’s failure to heed warnings about its lethal injection protocol.
Little was known about her condition, other than that she was being given “lifesaving care.” It is the first time in the modern era of capital punishment that someone received an execution drug and survived, the nonpartisan Death Penalty Information Center said.
Randy Spivey, one of her lawyers, described what he said was a “torturous” experience in the execution chamber, where Ms. Pike’s left arm was pierced by at least seven needles, her right arm turned purple, and she spoke about a burning sensation.
At one point, he said, Ms. Pike tried to help her executioners. She asked them to “‘please try up on my shoulder higher,’” he recalled.
The execution, Mr. Spivey asserted, was shrouded in secrecy, with her lawyers struggling to get information. Her lawyers had repeatedly warned in court that Ms. Pike’s execution could go awry because of her small veins and her medical history.
“We may never know what all she was suffering through, either because she can’t remember it, she can’t tell it, or it overwhelms her,” said Stephen Ferrell, from the Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee. It fulfilled Ms. Pike’s greatest fear, he said, which was “a fear of a prolonged, painful, traumatic death.”
“And that’s what happened,” Mr. Ferrell said. “Minus the death.”
The failed execution, the second this year in Tennessee, led Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, to call off all executions for the remainder of the year. Mr. Spivey and Ms. Pike’s legal team called on him to reconsider allowing Ms. Pike to serve the remainder of her life in prison, a request he had rejected earlier this week. Ms. Pike, now 50, has expressed remorse for the 1995 murder of a classmate.
“We at this point do not know the ramifications of the chemical torture that she has endured,” Mr. Spivey said. He called it “cruel.”
Mr. Lee, who is in the final months of his term-limited tenure as governor, conceded that “it shouldn’t have happened” and called the botched execution a “tragedy.” But he remained adamant on Thursday that the state had an obligation to carry out the death sentence and said he believed the correct protocol had been followed.
“The people of Tennessee have determined that the death penalty is the appropriate penalty for the most heinous crimes in the state,” Mr. Lee said. “The people of Tennessee make that decision, and my job is to make sure then that those sentences are carried out.”
Mr. Lee also vowed to launch an independent investigation into the failure and said no executions would take place under his watch until there was an understanding of what went wrong. It is the second time in five years that Mr. Lee has paused executions because of questions over the effectiveness of the state’s lethal injections. In 2022, he ordered a review after prison officials failed to properly test the drugs before an execution.
Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican who is the front-runner to replace Mr. Lee, said she wanted to bring back the electric chair as a more common method of capital punishment. Cameron Sexton, speaker of Tennessee’s House who is also a Republican, said the General Assembly would investigate and explore ways to prevent executions from failing.
“We will look at all options — expanding the alternatives and changing the current medications to include potassium chloride,” Mr. Sexton said. “Thirty years is too long for justice.”
Others, including Democrats in the state, said the only recourse was to abolish the death penalty.
Ms. Pike was hospitalized Wednesday evening after it was clear that she was still conscious after two doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital.
Ms. Pike, convicted of the murder of Colleen Slemmer, had been on death row for more than three decades. She would have been the first woman executed in the state in more than 200 years.
Her lawyers had raised concerns about whether the procedure could be carried out without causing excessive pain, given the failure to execute Tony Carruthers this year. Mr. Lee issued a reprieve for Mr. Carruthers, another death-row inmate whose execution was canceled after medical staff members failed to find a vein.
The Wednesday execution was already delayed after a flurry of last-minute legal challenges. But after the Supreme Court cleared the way, Tennessee officials moved ahead.
May Martinez, Ms. Slemmer’s mother, drove from her home in Florida to Nashville to witness the execution, which she has long supported. As of Thursday, she had not publicly commented on the failure.
Only a few people were allowed to witness the attempt to end Ms. Pike’s life. While the curtains separating the witness space from the execution chamber were drawn for much of the time, reporters said they could hear Ms. Pike breathing and snoring for nearly an hour.
Mr. Spivey, who witnessed the execution, emphasized that much of the process was conducted in secrecy. He said it took more than seven minutes for him to be allowed a phone call to reach other lawyers outside the prison, where there are strict limitations on technology. Mr. Ferrell also said that Ms. Pike’s legal team struggled to reach Mr. Lee’s office and the Tennessee Supreme Court.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said in a statement late Wednesday that it “had followed every step of the state’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the attorney general’s office.”
“The lethal injection chemical in the protocol has consistently been effective,” the department said. The agency did not have an additional comment on Thursday.
Mr. Lee on Thursday did not directly answer a question about whether prison agency leaders should be removed. But he repeated that he believed the department had followed the protocol correctly.
“There was no reason to expect it to not work, but it didn’t,” he said. “But something didn’t go well or right last night, and we need to find out why.”
Jamie McGee contributed reporting from Nashville.
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