Christa Pike remains unconscious on a ventilator, lawyers say – as they reveal disturbing new info on botched execution

CHRISTA PIKE remains unconscious over 24 hours after prison staff failed to put her to death via lethal injection.

The convicted killer has been left unable to breathe on her own after surviving two full doses of pentobarbital, her lawyers said.

Pike’s legal team filed documents on Friday afternoon requesting a judge preserve evidence of the Tennessee Department of Correction’s allegedly “incompetent and reckless actions” related to her botched execution.

Pike remained “critically ill” as of Thursday night, and was “intubated, on a ventilator, and remains unconscious,” the filing said.

Her attorneys said prison staff struggled to find a vein and used several needles to try and gain venous access to execute Pike, 50.

Hospital workers have been working tirelessly to save Pike’s life and clear the lethal drug from her system.

Her arms remain burned, blistered and swollen after her attorneys say she was struck with at least seven needles.

“I counted at least seven needles used in her left arm alone,” her attorney Randy Spivey said on Thursday.

“One of which appeared to be bent when it was pulled from her left arm after an unsuccessful attempt.”

During the execution attempt, Pike “could be heard crying, whimpering, and breathing loudly,” her lawyer’s legal filing read.

At one point during the execution attempt, Pike said it felt like her arm was “about to burst open,” asking prison staff, “Does this happen like that?”

Pike was sentenced to death after being found guilty of murdering her college classmate, Colleen Slemmer, 19, whom she thought was trying to steal her boyfriend, in 1995.

Several witnesses to the botched execution reported hearing Pike snore in the nearly two hours before prison staff closed the curtain, shut off the microphone and ushered the media out.

“We are working closely with those closest to Christa to respect her wishes, safeguard her privacy and protect her rights as a patient during this extraordinarily difficult time,” the killer’s attorneys Luke Ihnen and Stephen Ferrell told TMZ.

“We ask that the public and the media respect that privacy as well.”

Ferrell said on Thursday that Pike was cooperative during her execution, and even tried to instruct the medical team on where to place the IV.

“She over and over again said, ‘Please, try up on my shoulder higher. Please, try here, please try here. I think it will be Okay,’ and she thanked them, at least when they thought they had established a line,” he said.

“Ms. Pike was kind, she was cooperative, and she was at peace the whole time.”

Dr Joel Zivot, who has been working on Pike’s case and is a professor at the Emory University School of Medicine, told the BBC that the inmate could face long-lasting health complications from the botched execution.

“It’s very possible that as a consequence of the delay of the beginning of resuscitation she will have a brain injury,” he said.

Ferrell echoed the same concern, telling People: “It’s such an unknown: what was conscious, what will be remembered, what damage may have occurred to her brain from oxygen deprivation.

“We don’t know at this point, where we are, everything we say, I think, would be speculation.

“But 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 in such a way that sometimes pain and suffering affect people that way.”

The attorney said Pike’s “biggest fear” was not death, but rather “a prolonged death, and that’s what happened, minus the death.”

Pike would have been the first woman in Tennessee to be executed in over 200 years had the execution been successful.

Her lawyers raised concerns about lethal injection months before her day of execution, saying she had small veins and a blood condition that could make it more difficult to insert an IV.

Pike asked to be executed by firing squad, which the state does not do, or by hanging, for which officials said they did not have the equipment.

She also asked for a physician not employed by the state department of corrections to be present, in addition to an ICU ambulance if needed for “resuscitative measures.”

Pike’s attorneys said her concerns were “laughed off, scoffed at, and dismissed” as “speculation.”

What comes next remains unclear, as Zivot told The Sun there are situations where an inmate is took sick to be put to death.

He said if Pike’s heath “can never be restored to some degree where it would be conceivable that she could actually be executed again, then she may not face that.”

However, if she recovers to a certain degree, there is a chance she could face a second execution attempt, Zivot said.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has pressed pause on the remaining executions scheduled for 2026 after officials were unable to carry out Pike’s execution.

Lee has demanded a review of the state’s execution procedures as well.