Execution staff warned of possibility that some of Christa Pike’s veins were ‘blown’: lawyer

Members of the Tennessee execution team failed several times to install working IV lines in Christa Pike’s arms before her attempted execution and warned that some of her veins were broken, or “blew,” before she was injected with the lethal drug, her attorney wrote in a court document Thursday.

The IV team went through about 10 needles and tried multiple IV sites on both arms, attorney Randy Spivey wrote in the document, which provides the most detailed account of the execution attempt yet. They even struggled to push saline through the last IV site they established, Spivey wrote.

Pike, 50, was hospitalized after surviving two doses of pentobarbital when the state tried to execute her on Sept. 30 for the 1995 shooting death of classmate Colleen Slemmer. She was 18 when she tortured and killed Slemmer with her boyfriend, and became one of the youngest women to be sentenced to death.

No protocol for those who survive 2nd injection

State protocol calls for a second dose of pentobarbital if the first does not result in death, but it does not prescribe what to do if a person survives the second injection.

After being taken to the hospital, Pike was on a ventilator for several days. At one point, her lawyers did not expect her to survive. She eventually regained consciousness and returned to prison after being released.

The botched execution has brought renewed scrutiny to how Tennessee carries out capital punishment. The court document was part of a separate legal proceeding in which people on Tennessee’s death row are challenging lethal injection procedures.

“Our predictions about the likelihood of wrongful executions have come true – and will continue to come true – without substantial change,” said Kit Thomas, a lawyer representing people on death row in the case.

‘Cribbling and grimacing’

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

They managed to place an IV in Pike’s right arm within about six minutes, but it took them nearly an hour to complete the same process in her left arm.

Pike was “wincing and grimacing” as IV team members moved the needles into her left arm, Spivey wrote, and team members repeatedly expressed doubt after inserting the needles.

One team member said a vein “might blow” at 6:57 p.m. while examining an IV in Pike’s left arm, but two others said they couldn’t tell, Spivey wrote. “One of them said something like ‘it’s either blood or blood, I need to know,'” Spivey wrote.

The team tried again with a different location in her left arm, and the needle appeared to be severely bent when they pulled it out, the lawyer said.

“I think it’s blown,” the attorney recalled one of the IV team members saying at 7:07 p.m.

After more attempts, the team decided at 7:13 p.m. that they had successfully placed an IV in Pike’s left arm, and they cuffed her hands and hooked her up to a heart monitor.

Complains of pain

A series of phone calls were made to the execution chamber, which began about five minutes later.

Spivey said it appears the execution team members were responsible for pushing the pentobarbital into the lines — a process that occurs in an adjacent room — prompting the IV team for repeated checks of Pike’s left arm.

It’s unclear exactly how the pentobarbital was pushed into the IV lines, but at 7:34 p.m., Pike said her arm hurt.

“I feel like my arm is about to burst. It’s burning,” she said, according to her attorney. She continued to speak with her spiritual advisor for the next 10 minutes before she began making an “agitated snoring sound,” Spivey wrote.

Over the next 30 minutes, Pike tensed, twitched, moved his head and appeared to be struggling to breathe, Spivey said, and when he asked to use a phone, he was led on a circuitous, seven-minute walk through the facility instead of being allowed to use the phone in the execution room.

Spivey called fellow attorneys at 8:22 p.m. and asked them to stop the execution because a third dose of pentobarbital is not authorized under state protocol. He then went back into the witness room and told the deputy attorney general that Pike needed immediate medical attention.

Spivey was told an ambulance was on its way at 8:50 p.m., and 20 minutes later he was told medical personnel were providing life-saving measures, he wrote. An ambulance was seen at the hospital at 9.14 pm