Christa Pike told medical staff she feared her arm would “burst open” during Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute her by lethal injection, according to a court filing by her attorneys.
Pike, 50, remains unconscious and on a ventilator after the botched procedure at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville last Wednesday, her lawyer Randy Spivey said. She is the only person known to have survived a lethal injection after drugs entered her bloodstream.
Medical personnel stuck her with at least seven needles before successfully accessing a vein, her attorneys wrote in the filing. One needle was “bent in a 90-degree angle” upon removal.
“My arm feels like it’s about to burst open,” Pike said during the ordeal, according to the court documents. She then asked her all-female execution team, “does this happen like that?”
Witnesses heard Pike crying and struggling to breathe throughout the procedure, her lawyers stated. She was given two lethal doses of pentobarbital before the execution was halted.
The drug used, pentobarbital, is a caustic, highly alkaline chemical that burns human flesh, tissue and veins on contact, Pike’s experts said in the filing. They compared its effects to household chemicals like “bleach” or “Drano.”
When Pike was rushed to a Nashville hospital following the failed execution, both arms were swollen, severely burned and blistered, according to the court documents. She has remained in critical condition since and likely suffered permanent brain damage, Spivey said.
The case stems from a 1995 murder that shocked Tennessee. Pike, then 18, lured her 19-year-old Job Corps classmate Colleen Slemmer to an isolated area of the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville campus, where she tortured and killed the younger woman in a jealous rage. Pike believed Slemmer was attempting to steal her boyfriend, according to her confession.
Pike, her 17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, and friend Shadolla Peterson, 18, participated in the attack. Pike killed Slemmer by smashing her head with a chunk of asphalt, then kept a piece of the victim’s skull as a trophy. A jury sentenced Pike to death in 1996.
Shipp received life in prison because he was a minor at the time of the crime. Peterson, who testified against Pike and Shipp, was sentenced to probation for her role as an accessory.
Pike’s attorneys have not indicated what legal steps they plan to take following the failed execution attempt.