Christa Pike is still alive after her execution failed despite getting seven lethal injections.
The killer showed executioners where to find a vein, according to her attorneys.
Her lawyer Randy Spivey said he saw at least seven needles put into Pike’s left arm.
One of the needles appeared bent when doctors removed it, he said.
‘Last night was not inefficient, it was cruel, and it was torturous. It was also predictable,’ Spivey said.
Pike’s attorney, Randy Spivey, slammed the state of Tennessee for its botched execution, which he called ‘inefficient, cruel, and torturous.’
‘Christa is alive right now. We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment,’ Spivey said during a news conference.
‘But we know she is alive right now and receiving lifesaving medical care.’
Attorney Steve Ferrell said Pike feared there would be complications with the lethal injection because of a lifelong blood disorder that made it tough to get needles into her veins.
‘Throughout her life, she’s explained to us that she had trouble having blood drawn,’ Ferrell said.
‘Ms Pike was not just cooperative but was helping to instruct the people placing the IV lines’ as to where they might put them,’ Spivey said.
‘She told them over and over, please try higher on my shoulder.’
Pike’s lawyers said the failed execution amounted to ‘torture,’ and they called for her death sentence to be commuted.
Strapped to a gurney in the execution chamber, Pike described herself as at peace.
When asked if she had any last words, Pike said several things, including, ‘I’m at peace. I’m ready to be free. … This is a happy day.’
She complained that her arm felt as though it was ‘about to burst open’ before asking prison staff, ‘Does this happen like that?’
But she remained awake, and at one point complained about the feeling in her arm. The chamber’s curtains were closed, suggesting it had been five minutes since the first dose was administered. But they were reopened three minutes later.
An hour after officials first raised the curtains, witnesses reported that a second dose of pentobarbital was administered. Pike could still be heard snoring behind a closed curtain until the microphone was cut off almost 30 minutes later.
She said: ‘They went through two rounds, and she was still breathing at the end, it was very ragged, she lifted her head up and was looking around at one point.’
‘She said there was a spot that was burning and hurting and asked if that was normal. None of that was normal.’
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