Pike Execution: IV Team Reported Vein Rupture Before Lethal Dose

Christa Pike’s execution team reported that her veins may have ruptured before the lethal drug was administered, according to a court filing submitted Thursday. The document provides the most detailed account yet of the Sept. 30 procedure, which left the 50-year-old inmate hospitalized after she survived two doses of pentobarbital.

Attorney Randy Spivey wrote that the team struggled to establish the two IV lines required by Tennessee protocol. They used approximately ten needles and attempted several sites on both of Pike’s arms. Spivey noted that the team had difficulty pushing saline through the final IV site they established. The right arm line was placed in about six minutes, but the left arm took nearly an hour.

Spivey described Pike as wincing and grimacing while team members moved needles in her left arm. At 6:57 p.m., one team member said a vein might be blowing. Two others could not confirm. A later needle appeared severely bent when removed. By 7:07 p.m., a team member stated, I think it's blown. The team declared the IV successfully placed in the left arm at 7:13 p.m.

Phone calls to the execution chamber began five minutes after the IV was set. Spivey said the team pushing the drug from an adjoining room repeatedly asked the IV team to check Pike’s left arm. It is unclear exactly when the pentobarbital entered the lines. At 7:34 p.m., Pike said, I feel like my arm is about to bust. It burns. About ten minutes later, she began making an agitated snoring sound.

Over the next 30 minutes, Spivey said Pike strained, flinched, and moved her head. He appeared to struggle to breathe. When Spivey asked to use a phone, he was taken on a seven-minute route through the facility. At 8:22 p.m., he called fellow attorneys to stop the execution, noting that a third dose is not authorized. He told the deputy attorney general that Pike needed immediate medical care.

Pike was placed on a ventilator for several days. At one point, her attorneys did not expect her to live. She regained consciousness and has since returned to prison. Tennessee’s protocol calls for a second dose of pentobarbital if the first does not cause death. The protocol does not specify what should happen if a person survives the second injection.

Pike was convicted in the 1995 stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer. She was 18 at the time and became one of the youngest women ever sentenced to death. The filing was submitted in a separate case where people on Tennessee’s death row are challenging the state’s lethal injection procedures. Kit Thomas, an attorney representing them, said, Our predictions about the likelihood of botched executions have come true, and will continue to come true, without substantial change.

Spivey was told at 8:50 p.m. that an ambulance was on the way. About 20 minutes later, he was told medical staff were performing life-saving measures. An ambulance arrived at the hospital at 9:14 p.m.