Christa Pike remained hospitalized, unconscious and on a machine helping her breathe after her failed execution in Tennessee, her attorneys said in a court filing Friday. The attorneys said hospital staff were working to save Pike’s life and clear the pentobarbital she was administered from her system as of late Thursday. Pike received two doses of the drug in a failed attempt by the state of Tennessee to execute her on Wednesday.
In the court filing, Pike’s attorneys said they believed problems with intravenuous lines caused the pentobarbital to flow into her body instead of her bloodstream. They also wrote that instead of “remedying this failure” the execution team proceeded to prepare and administer a backup set of pentobarbital syringes. Pike, 50, was sentenced to death in 1996 at the age of 20 in connection with the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
Pike and her then boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, killed Slemmer at a job training camp in Knoxville, Tennessee. One grim detail about the case is that a satanic symbol had been carved into Slemmer’s chest. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the last execution of a woman in Tennessee was in 1820, meaning Pike would have been the first woman to be executed in the state in more than 200 years.
Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute Pike has prompted top lawyers, doctors and members of the faith community to call for a moratorium on the death penalty in the US. The contributed reporting
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