Failed execution in Tennessee: death row inmate Christa Pike in the hospital

According to her lawyers, murderer Christa Pike, who was sentenced to death in the US state of Tennessee, remains unconscious and connected to a ventilator after her failed execution.

Pike is intubated and receiving ventilator support at a hospital in Nashville, Pike's lawyers wrote in a court filing Friday.

The 50-year-old was scheduled to be executed with a lethal injection on Wednesday evening (local time). But after she was given the two doses of the drug pentobarbital required by the protocol, according to authorities, she continued to live.

Pike is therefore in critical condition. Hospital staff are working to save her life and remove the administered pentobarbital from her body, the lawyers wrote.

"My arm feels like it's about to burst open"

On Thursday, Pike's attorney, Randy Spivey, said staff tried unsuccessfully to establish an intravenous line for about an hour during the attempted execution.

"I counted at least seven needles in her left arm alone," Spivey said. According to the court filing, one of them was bent 90 degrees when pulled out. Pike was heard crying during the procedure.

She breathed loudly and said: "My arm feels like it's about to burst open." Another time she asked if it was normal.

When she was taken to the hospital, both of the 50-year-old's arms were "swollen, burned and covered in blisters."

Experts are quoted in the application as saying that the injected pentobarbital is highly alkaline and causes burns to skin, tissue and veins on contact.

During the execution, her right arm turned purple, according to her lawyers.

According to the lawyers, people involved in the execution apparently did not notice that the poison was getting "in whole or in part" into the surrounding tissue instead of into Pike's veins.

So it was decided to give another dose of pentobarbital.

Pike was sentenced to death for murder in 1996

Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. She was 18 years old at the time of the crime.

In 1995, three teenagers tortured and killed the victim in a remote area near the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

According to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, Pike is the only one of the three to be sentenced to death.

Her boyfriend at the time was 17 years old at the time of the crime and received a life sentence. Another 18-year-old was sentenced to probation.