Christa Pike, a Tennessee inmate on death row, is now in a critical condition at a Nashville hospital after surviving two lethal injections in a botched execution, her lawyers have said.
Randy Spivey, a lawyer on Ms Pike’s team, described her experience as “torturous”, saying it could have been avoided had the court heeded repeated warnings that the execution could go south due to her small veins and health history.
Stephen Ferrell from the Stephen Ferrell said there were indications that Ms Pike may not be able to speak or even remember the incident.
“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,” Mr Ferrell said.
He added that the failed execution fulfilled Ms Pike’s greatest fear “of a prolonged, painful, traumatic death.”
“And that’s what happened,” he said. “Minus the death.”
Mr Spivey and her other lawyers urged Republican Governor Bill Lee to reconsider the death sentence and allow Ms Pike to spend the rest of her life behind bars after the governor called off executions for the rest of the year.
Mr Lee acknowledged the incident as a “tragedy” that “shouldn’t have happened” but insisted on allowing the law to take its course.
“The people of Tennessee have determined that the death penalty is the appropriate penalty for the most heinous crimes in the state,” Mr Lee said. “The people of Tennessee make that decision, and my job is to make sure then that those sentences are carried out.”
Ms Pike was convicted for the murder of Colleen Slemmer in the 1990s and remained on death row for over 30 years.
Had she died Wednesday, she would have made history as the first Tennessee woman to be executed in more than 200 years.