Lethal injection survivor Krista Gail Pike may have suffered brain damage

American criminal Christa Gail Pike, who survived two lethal injections, may have suffered brain damage. RIA Novosti reports this with reference to the New York Times.

The situation was commented on by anesthesiologist Joel Zivot, who advised the woman’s lawyers before the execution. “Given that Pike was hospitalized more than an hour after the fatal drug was administered, it is very possible that she suffered permanent brain injury,” the doctor said. The doctor also suggested that the execution might not have gone according to plan due to the convict’s narrow veins or the quality of the medicine itself.

It is known that the criminal is currently unconscious in the hospital and connected to a ventilator.

Pike was sentenced to capital punishment 30 years ago, when she was 20 years old. In 1995, she and her boyfriend Tadaril Shipp attacked 18-year-old Colleen Slemmer. They brutally beat a girl they knew and carved a pentagram on her chest with a knife. According to investigators, Pike took a piece of the victim's skull from the crime scene as a souvenir.

Pike's lawyers asked the state Supreme Court to commute her sentence. They explained that she suffered from physical and sexual abuse as a child and was diagnosed with bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorder. However, this did not convince the judge. If executed, Pike would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.