Christa Pike, a 50-year-old Tennessee death-row inmate, remains critically ill, unconscious and on a mechanical ventilator after surviving a botched execution by lethal injection, her attorneys said. She is receiving treatment at a hospital in the Nashville area, where doctors are working to save her life and treat the effects of the drugs administered during the failed execution.
The state of Tennessee attempted to execute Pike on Wednesday by administering two doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital, but neither dose killed her. She was subsequently taken by ambulance to a hospital after the execution attempt failed.
Pike was convicted of the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow participant at a job-training camp in Knoxville. Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, tortured and killed Slemmer; she was sentenced to death in 1996 and has spent roughly three decades in prison.