Tennessee failed to execute Christa Pike despite administering two doses of a lethal drug in the state’s death chamber, leaving her on a ventilator and unconscious in a hospital in the following hours, her attorneys said in a court filing Friday.
The court filing offered the first detailed account of Pike’s condition after an ambulance carried her away from Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Wednesday night. Her attorneys said a day earlier that she was in critical condition.
Hospital staff, her lawyers said, were working to save Pike’s life and as of late Thursday were trying to clear the two doses of the drug that the state uses to execute prisoners.
What happened to Pike is “singular and unparalleled,” said Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. She said Pike was the only person who has remained alive after lethal injection drugs were administered in an execution.
Here’s what to know about Pike’s failed execution: