Christa Pike's attorneys say she's in critical condition after botched lethal injections
Convicted Tennessee killer Christa Pike is hospitalized in critical condition a day after two botched lethal injection attempts in the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, Pike's attorneys said Thursday.
"Christa is alive right now," Randy Spivey, one of her lawyers, told reporters in a news briefing delivered over Zoom Thursday afternoon. "We don't have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment."
Due to limited information and health privacy rules, he said he couldn't go into specific details.
"She is in critical condition receiving lifesaving care. That is the extent that we have at the moment," he said.
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Another of her attorneys, Stephen Ferrell, said it appears the needle "either became dislodged or pierced all the way through the veins," and the injection was not properly administered. But specific medical details were not available due to health privacy rules.
Pike, now 50, was the 18-year-old orchestrator of the torture and murder of Slemmer, a classmate and perceived romantic rival. Pike was supposed to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in over 200 years Wednesday evening after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an emergency stay of execution.
She received two injections at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Neither proved lethal.
"I'm haunted by last night," Spivey told reporters in a news briefing delivered over Zoom.
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Pike remained awake and at one point raised her head, asking prison officials whether her arm was supposed to feel a certain way. Witnesses reported that Pike continued breathing even after the second dose had been administered.
Prior to Wednesday's failed execution, Pike had asked for alternate methods of capital punishment, fearing that the lethal injection could go wrong. Her requests were denied.
Without getting into specifics due to privacy rules, Pike's attorneys did not dispute that the Tennessee Department of Correction upheld her request for an all-female execution team.
Slemmer's mother also drove from Florida to Nashville to witness the botched procedure. She has not responded to Fox News Digital's attempts to reach her.
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"I cannot imagine what this was like for the family of Ms. Slemmer or anyone who loves that family or is close to that family or anyone who loves Christa or is close to Christa," Spivey said. "This is awful, and this kind of thing should never happen again."
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Pike was one of three teens convicted of Slemmer's brutal slaying during which the victim was tortured, slashed, beaten and had her head crushed with a chunk of asphalt.
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Pike was 18 in January 1995 at the time of the attack. She, boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and a friend named Shadolla Peterson lured Slemmer out by claiming they wanted to go to a music store and pick up marijuana they'd hidden in a park near their vocational school.
Pike then attacked her. As Slemmer tried to escape, Shipp grabbed her and held her down, according to court records.
Phil Keith, who was Knoxville's police chief at the time, told Fox News Digital the assailants tortured Slemmer for up to an hour before she died. Pike took a piece of her shattered skull as a trophy, which she showed off the next day in school, and Shipp carved pentagrams into her chest and face.
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"Pike was the catalyst," Keith said. "She was the one that was planning out all the events, the luring, all that."
The failed execution prompted Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to halt the state’s remaining scheduled execution this year and order "a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred."
Fox News' Landon Mion contributed to this report.