Tennessee's botched execution of Christa Pike leaves her unconscious and triggers second moratorium in five years

Just before the state of Tennessee botched her execution and left her unconscious and on a ventilator, it offered Christa Pike a last meal.

She turned it down, asking instead that the $20 she had to cover her final dinner be spent on her be used to buy pizza for homeless people in downtown Nashville, according to The New York Times.

Pike was to be executed Wednesday at 10 a.m. By the end of the day, she would survive two lethal injection attempts, end up in the hospital, and force Tennessee to enact its second moratorium on executions in the last five years, according to the paper.

Pike, as of October 3, was unconscious, intubated, and on a ventilator at a Nashville-area hospital following the failed execution.

The 50-year-old woman's execution had been a point of contention and concern for both her legal team and anti-death penalty advocates in the weeks before the incident.

She had been convicted and sentenced to death for torturing and murdering her classmate, Colleen Slemmer, when she was 18 years old. Pike has admitted that she was without remorse when she was convicted, but has grown over the years to regret the life she took.

Her defense team argued during the trial that Pike was a victim of extreme trauma and sexual abuse, and that the weight of those factors on her actions was not considered during her trial and sentencing.

The family of the victim told the NYT that Pike deserves “swift justice.”

Pike received a short-lived stay of execution just 90 minutes before she was scheduled to die. A federal appeals court issued the stay, saying it needed more time to consider new arguments in her case. Later, just after 5:45 p.m., the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the stay, clearing the path for the execution.

The Department of Corrections has insisted it followed its lethal injection procedures to the letter. Randy Spivey, Pike's attorney, claims otherwise.

He told the NYT that state protocol says the process should take 10 minutes, but it instead took an hour.

“I counted at least seven needles used in her left arm alone, one of which appeared to be bent when it was pulled from her arm after an unsuccessful attempt,” he said.

He told the paper that the legal team had warned the state that a lethal injection was a bad idea, noting that Pike has small veins and a blood disorder.

Spivey said Pike was even trying to help the executioner find viable injection spots.

“Over and over again she said, ‘Please try up on my shoulder higher, please try here, please try here,’” Spivey told the paper.

The state ultimately failed to execute Pike and instead left her unconscious and critically ill.

Despite the current moratorium on executions, there may be future attempts to kill Pike. Gubernatorial front-runner Sen. Marsha Blackburn said, if elected, she would try again to execute Pike, according to the NYT.

Whether the state can try again may be determined by the state of Pike’s mind when — or if — she recovers. The Supreme Court has previously ruled that a prisoner sentenced to die must have the cognitive abilities to possess a “rational understanding” of why they’re being executed.

Pike’s lawyers have asked Gov. Bill Lee to allow her to live out the rest of her life in prison. He has ordered an investigation to determine what went wrong during the execution.