NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Christa Pike has remained unconscious and on a ventilator at a Tennessee hospital four days after a failed execution, and doctors may need several more days to determine her prognosis, one of her attorneys said Sunday.
Officials have released few details about Pike’s condition since Wednesday night, when the execution attempt took place. She remains hospitalized under guard while doctors work to remove the massive dose of the barbiturate pentobarbital from her system.
Asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” whether Pike had regained consciousness after the attempt, Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said, “Not that I am aware of.”
Lawyer says Pike’s medical decisions are being decided by someone else
Pike, now 50, was 18 when she and her boyfriend tortured and killed classmate Colleen Slemmer during a jealous rage in 1995. She later became one of the youngest women in the United States to be placed on death row.
Tennessee prison officials administered two doses of pentobarbital Wednesday night. The drug failed to kill Pike, and her attorneys said the injections left her arms burned and blistered by the caustic medication.
Ferrell said Pike had given another person medical power of attorney, and that individual was protecting her privacy.
“I’m not sure what all they may have told that person,” Ferrell said.
Pike’s lawyers have not disclosed who is making her medical decisions. They said it could be several more days before they know whether she will 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 the team appreciated “all respect for Christa’s rightful privacy.”
Pike’s lawyer says Tennessee needs to be more open about executions
Pike’s execution was postponed for more than eight hours Wednesday while the U.S. Supreme Court considered a federal appeals court ruling that had halted the lethal injection. The justices ultimately overturned that ruling, allowing the execution to proceed while judges reviewed whether jurors should have considered Pike’s claim that she suffered sexual abuse as a child.
On Friday, her attorneys asked a court to require Tennessee prison officials to preserve written records, communications, photographs and video connected to the execution.
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Like many states that retain the death penalty, Tennessee keeps numerous execution details confidential, including information about how lethal drugs are made, obtained and tested for 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.
Tennessee has struggled with executions before
Pike’s case marks the second time this year that Tennessee has been unable to complete an execution after a prisoner appeared to be moments from death. In May, officials halted Tony Carruthers’ execution after placing an IV in his right arm but failing to establish a second line.
Frank Strada, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Correction, announced Saturday that he would resign.
Gov. Bill Lee has ordered former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton to conduct an independent investigation into Tennessee’s capital punishment system. Lee also reviewed the state’s execution procedures after calling off another execution in 2022 and determining that officials had not followed the state’s lethal-injection protocol.
Prison officials and the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office have provided few public comments since Pike was taken to the hospital.
Future of Pike’s death penalty case is unclear
If Pike survives, the next steps in her death penalty case remain uncertain. Her attorneys have asked the governor to commute her sentence to life in prison.
Pike did not dispute that she killed 19-year-old Slemmer in 1995. 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.
The video in the player above is from a previous report.
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