Botched US execution leaves murderer unconscious on ventilator—lawyers

WASHINGTON, United States(AFP)—Convicted United States (US)  murderer Christa Pike is unconscious and on a ventilator after a botched attempt to execute her by lethal injection, her lawyers said in a court filing Friday.

After a dramatic day of legal wrangling, prison officials in Tennessee on Wednesday injected two deadly doses of the highly toxic drug pentobarbital into Pike for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer.

But witnesses said that the 50-year-old Pike remained awake longer than expected and was later heard "loudly snoring" before an ambulance rushed her to a nearby hospital.

As of Thursday evening, "Ms. Pike remains critically ill and is being treated at a Nashville-area hospital," her lawyer Luke Ihnen wrote in a filing with a Tennessee court.

"She is intubated, on a ventilator, and remains unconscious," he added.

The lawyer said medics were "working to save Ms. Pike's life" after she arrived with both arms "swollen, burned, and blistered."

In a separate filing with a federal appeals court, Pike's legal team wrote that when the execution had gone awry and they had asked a court to halt it, attorneys for the state argued that the department of corrections "had no obligation to render life-saving care" to Pike.

Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, who was among the witnesses, angrily told a local news outlet that the "state owes me a big apology," and that it had failed her family.

Martinez, who now lives in Florida and raised money to travel to Tennessee, told WJXX television: "All I wanted was justice."

- Execution moratorium -

The Tennessee Department of Corrections said earlier this week that it "followed every step of the state's lawful, established execution protocol."

But the state's Republican governor, Bill Lee, who previously denied Pike clemency, halted further executions through the rest of the year while a review is conducted.

Pike's was the second failed execution in Tennessee this year. The state halted the execution by lethal injection of Tony Carruthers in May after medical staff were unable to tap a vein.

"After having endured solitary confinement for more than 20 years and a full attempt to kill her by lethal injection, Christa has endured punishment greater than any other person in the history of the American death penalty. The governor must commute Christa's sentence now," Pike lawyer Randy Spivey said earlier this week.

Pike's lawyers had argued she should be granted clemency due to her young age and mental health issues at the time of Slemmer's killing. They also cited her history of childhood sexual assault and post-traumatic stress disorder.

"This event is the worst we've seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era," Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told The New York Times.

"There is no precedent."

US President Donald Trump questioned how an execution like Pike's could fail, telling reporters that it "shouldn't be very difficult," while UN rights chief Volker Turk urged Tennessee not to make a new attempt to execute Pike.

Had the drugs killed Pike, she would have been the first woman executed by the state in more than two centuries.

In the United States, only 18 women have been executed since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.