Tennessee execution team reports IV difficulties during Christa Pike's botched execution
The Tennessee Department of Corrections said staff struggled to establish intravenous lines, using multiple needles before administering pentobarbital to inmate Christa Pike, who survived the attempt and was later hospitalized.
Tennessee correction officials said the execution team was unable to secure reliable intravenous access for inmate Christa Pike despite attempting about ten needle insertions in both arms. The team reported that some of Pike's veins may have ruptured before the pentobarbital was administered, according to a court filing by her attorney, Randy Spivey.
Pike, 50, was scheduled for execution on Sept. 30 for the 1995 stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer. After the first dose of pentobarbital failed to cause death, a second dose was given, but Pike survived and was taken to a hospital, where she was placed on a ventilator for several days before regaining consciousness and returning to prison.
State protocol mandates a second dose if the initial injection does not result in death, but it does not specify procedures if a person survives the second dose. The incident has prompted renewed scrutiny of Tennessee's execution practices.
"The IV team went through about 10 needles and tried several IV sites on both arms, and even struggled to push saline through the last IV site we established," Spivey wrote in the filing.