Tennessee protocol specifies no steps if Pike survives second pentobarbital dose

Establishing Pike’s left-arm IV took nearly an hour

Tennessee’s execution protocol calls for a second pentobarbital dose if the first does not result in death, but does not spell out what to do if a person survives the second injection. Attorney Randy Spivey’s document says execution staff used about 10 needles across several sites in both of Christa Pike’s arms and struggled to push saline through the last IV site they established. Spivey wrote that staff established an IV in Pike’s right arm within about 6 minutes but took nearly an hour to complete the process in her left arm after she advised them to look in her upper arm.

Staff failed multiple times to establish working IV lines before Pike’s attempted execution and warned that some of her veins may have ruptured, or “blown,” before she was injected with the lethal drug, according to Spivey’s filing. The Associated Press described the document, filed Thursday, as the most detailed account of the execution attempt so far.

The execution team began trying to place the two IVs required by Tennessee’s execution protocols at 6:34 p.m. When the team struggled, Pike helped and advised personnel to look in her upper arm for a viable vein, Spivey wrote.

During the left-arm attempts, Pike was “wincing and grimacing” as team members moved needles around inside her arm. Team members repeatedly expressed doubts after inserting the needles. At 6:57 p.m., one member said a vein “might be blowing” while examining an IV in Pike’s left arm, but two others said they could not tell. One of them said something like, “it’s either blood or blown, I need to know,” Spivey wrote.

The team tried another spot in Pike’s left arm, and the needle appeared severely bent when it was pulled out, the attorney said. At 7:07 p.m., one team member said, “I think it’s blown.” After more attempts, the team decided at 7:13 p.m. that it had successfully placed an IV in Pike’s left arm. The team taped her hands down and hooked her up to a heart monitor.

Starting about five minutes later, a series of phone calls was made to the execution chamber, Spivey wrote. It appeared that execution team members responsible for pushing the pentobarbital into the lines — a process that happens in an adjoining room — were asking the IV team for repeated checks of Pike’s left arm. It was not clear exactly when the pentobarbital was pushed into the IV lines.

At 7:34 p.m., Pike said her arm was hurting, according to her attorney. “I feel like my arm is about to bust. It burns,” she said. She continued to talk to her spiritual adviser for the next 10 minutes before she began making an “agitated snoring sound,” Spivey wrote.

Over the next 30 minutes, Pike strained, flinched, moved her head and seemed to struggle to breathe, Spivey said. When Spivey asked to use a phone, he was led on a circuitous, seven-minute route through the facility instead of being allowed to use a phone in the execution witness room.

Spivey called fellow attorneys at 8:22 p.m. and asked them to stop the execution because a third dose of pentobarbital was not authorized under the state’s protocol. He then returned to the witness room and told the deputy attorney general that Pike needed immediate medical care, according to the filing. Spivey was told at 8:50 p.m. that an ambulance was on the way and 20 minutes later that medical staff were providing life-saving measures, he wrote. An ambulance was seen arriving at the hospital at 9:14 p.m.

Christa Pike, 50, was hospitalized after surviving two doses of pentobarbital as Tennessee tried to execute her on Sept. 30. After being taken to a hospital, Pike was on a ventilator for several days. At one point, her attorneys did not expect her to survive. She ultimately regained consciousness and returned to prison after being discharged.

The Associated Press reported that the case concerned the 1995 stabbing death of Pike’s classmate Colleen Slemmer. Pike was 18 when she tortured and killed Slemmer with her boyfriend, becoming one of the youngest women to be sentenced to death.

The failed execution has brought renewed scrutiny to how Tennessee carries out death sentences. The court document was part of a separate legal proceeding in which people on the state’s death row are challenging Tennessee’s lethal-injection procedures. Kit Thomas, an attorney representing people on death row in the case, said, “Our predictions about the likelihood of botched executions have come true — and will continue to come true — without substantial change.”