Krista Pike remains in critical condition after botched execution in Tennessee

Krista Pike, a death row inmate from Tennessee, remains in critical condition in hospital after her botched lethal injection execution. They tried to execute Pike on Wednesday, but doctors are still not ready to predict whether she will regain consciousness.

In an interview with CNN on Sunday morning, Pike's lawyer, Stephen Ferrell, said doctors were still trying to get two doses of pentobarbital, a drug used in the death penalty, out of Pike's system.

They could not kill the convict with the first injection. According to the protocol, in this very rare scenario, a second injection is used. But even after the second, Pike showed signs of life. She was then transported to a Nashville hospital.

“She is still in hospital, on a ventilator, in critical condition; we really don’t know the forecast yet and we probably won’t know for several days,” Ferrell said.

He does not believe she was even momentarily conscious, adding that he receives information about her condition through her medical confidant rather than directly from doctors.

He himself was not in her room. “She is under guard. I don’t know who could have even seen her,” Ferrell says.

Authorities have not yet said whether they will try to execute Pike, 50, again. They also gave no explanation as to what exactly went wrong.

But Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee suspended all executions through the end of the year, and the head of the state's prison system said he would resign.

What did she go through?

“If she recovers - but she may never fully recover - questions may arise about her competency. In short, we just don’t know anything about it,” Ferrell said. - We did not discuss this issue. The Tennessee Attorney General's Office has not yet indicated its intentions."

Previously, doctors did not rule out that Pike could have suffered a brain injury due to the execution attempts.

Ferrell called on the governor to “at a minimum” commute her death sentence to life in prison. “She survived a harrowing execution attempt,” he said. “She spent more than 30 years in prison, most of that time in solitary confinement.”

“We don’t yet know — and may never know — what kind of torture she was subjected to during this time,” the lawyer said.

Pike, 18, was sentenced to death after she was found guilty of murdering fellow student Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville in 1995. A year later, after a violent public reaction to this murder, she was sentenced to capital punishment.

The decision to carry out the death sentence against a woman in Tennessee for the first time in 200 years was overturned by last-minute appeals.

Slammer's mother, Mae Martinez, came to Nashville to watch the execution. Martinez, who has always insisted that Pike should be executed, told local news outlet WJXX that she "burst into tears" after learning the execution had gone wrong.

“I think the state owes me a big apology,” she said.

The state Department of Corrections said the lethal injections were administered according to regulations, but said, "Protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was administered."

Pike's lawyers previously warned that her medical history and anatomical features - including thrombocytosis, a blood clotting disorder, and small veins - put her at risk of suffering "unnecessary" pain and suffering during the lethal injection.