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Court filing details failed IV attempts before Tennessee execution of Christa Pike
Tennessee execution staff reportedly used about 10 needles while trying to establish IV access for Christa Pike, and warned that some veins may have ruptured. Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital during the Sept. 30 execution attempt and was hospitalized.
Execution team members struggled to establish working IV lines in Christa Pike’s arms before Tennessee tried to execute her on Sept. 30, according to a court filing by her attorney, Randy Spivey. Staff used about 10 needles, tried several sites on both arms and warned that some veins might have “blown,” Spivey wrote in a filing submitted Thursday, Oct. 22.
The team also had difficulty pushing saline through the final IV line it established, the filing said. The details add to questions about how the state handled Pike’s execution attempt, which ended with her hospitalized after she survived two injections of pentobarbital.
Pike, 50, was placed on a ventilator for several days. Her attorneys said at one point they did not expect her to survive. She later regained consciousness and was discharged from the hospital and returned to prison.
Tennessee’s execution protocol calls for a second dose of pentobarbital if the first dose does not cause death. The protocol does not specify what officials should do if a person survives the second injection, according to the information in the filing.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of classmate Colleen Slemmer. Pike was 18 at the time of the killing, which she committed with her boyfriend. The failed execution has intensified scrutiny of Tennessee’s lethal-injection procedures and the safeguards governing them.