Filing: Tennessee team gave Pike backup pentobarbital instead of fixing IV

Lawyers, doctors, faith leaders call for US death penalty moratorium

In a Friday court filing, attorneys for Christa Pike said Tennessee’s execution team administered a backup set of pentobarbital syringes instead of fixing failed IV lines during the state’s Sept. 30 attempt to execute her at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Pike, 50, remained hospitalized, unconscious and on a machine helping her breathe as of late Thursday, her attorneys wrote.

The court filing came two days after the state halted the execution. Pike received two doses of the drug in the state’s failed attempt to carry out her execution on Wednesday. Hospital staff were working to save Pike’s life and clear the pentobarbital she was administered from her system as of late Thursday, according to the filing.

In Friday’s filing, Pike’s attorneys said they believed problems with the intravenous lines caused the pentobarbital to flow into her body rather than into her bloodstream. “Apparently at no point did any member of the execution team realize that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had blown and that the pentobarbital was, in whole or in part, entering Ms Pike’s body,” they wrote.

The attorneys also wrote that instead of “remedying this failure,” the execution team proceeded to prepare and administer a backup set of pentobarbital syringes.

Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 at age 20 in connection with the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Pike and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, killed Slemmer at a job training camp in Knoxville, Tennessee. A satanic symbol had been carved into Slemmer’s chest.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the last execution of a woman in Tennessee was in 1820. Had the state carried out the execution, Pike would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute Pike has prompted top lawyers, doctors and members of the faith community to call for a moratorium on the death penalty in the United States.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.