Tennessee IV team warned Christa Pike's vein might have 'blown' before lethal injection, her lawyer says in court filing

Tennessee's execution team doubted its own IV line before it injected Christa Pike, according to a court declaration filed Thursday, Oct. 22, by her attorney Randy Spivey. Spivey, who watched from the chamber, says team members used about 10 needles across both arms and said at least twice that a vein might have "blown."

The declaration is the most detailed account yet of the failed Sept. 30 execution. It was filed in a separate case in which death row prisoners are challenging Tennessee's lethal injection procedures.

Pike, 50, was convicted of the 1995 torture killing of 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer. She was 18 at the time and carried out the killing with her boyfriend, and she was sentenced to death. She survived two doses of pentobarbital, spent about 10 days in the hospital, and has since been returned to prison in Nashville. She can talk and walk, but her long-term prognosis is unknown.

The hour with the needles

Spivey writes that the team began trying to place the two IV lines required by Tennessee's protocol at about 6:34 p.m. The right arm took roughly six minutes. Pike helped, advising them to look in her upper arm.

The left arm took nearly an hour. Spivey says Pike was "wincing and grimacing" while team members moved needles around under her skin.

At 6:53 p.m., a team member Spivey calls "member two" first voiced fear the vein was blown and discarded a 20-gauge needle as too short. At 6:57 p.m., member two said it "might be blowing." Two others examined the site and said they couldn't tell.

"One of them said something like, 'it's either blood or blown, I need to know,'" Spivey wrote.

A later needle appeared severely bent when pulled out. At 7:07 p.m., Spivey recalls, a team member said, "I think it's blown." The team also struggled to push saline through the last IV site it established. The line-setting finished around 7:24 p.m., and the team left the chamber.

Pike's lawyers say she told the team, "My arm feels like it's about to burst open," and later asked, "Does this happen like that?" They say she arrived at the hospital with both arms swollen, burned and blistered.

What the lawyers allege

Pike's legal team argues the Tennessee Department of Correction failed to place or maintain the IV lines, failed to notice, and then gave a second dose anyway. Their filing says pentobarbital is highly alkaline and compares it to bleach or Drano because it "burns upon contact, including skin, tissue, and veins."

They say this produced extravasation, meaning the drug leaked into surrounding tissue instead of entering the bloodstream. These are allegations in a court filing, not findings by a court.

Kit Thomas, an attorney for death row prisoners in the protocol case, said: "Our predictions about the likelihood of botched executions have come true — and will continue to come true — without substantial change."

A different picture from the media room

The lawyers' picture of torment is not the only account. William Puckett, a WVLT reporter who witnessed the execution, told the Daily Mail that Pike sang a Buddhist meditation after the first injection, repeating, "Be kind and gentle to yourself and may you be at peace." He said she let out "a joyous laugh and chuckle," then began snoring.

Puckett said the curtain was raised about three minutes after it dropped at 7:46 p.m., and officials gave a second dose. He said her body twitched and she gasped about four minutes later. He said the snoring continued for roughly 50 more minutes while doctors and lawyers went in and out, and that media witnesses were escorted out around 8:53 p.m. with Pike still apparently breathing.

Spivey characterized the same night as "cruel" and "torturous." The two accounts describe different moments and do not necessarily contradict each other, but they leave open what Pike experienced.

How the night got there

Pike's 10 a.m. execution was paused after a federal appeals court asked for more time to consider whether her history of childhood sexual abuse was fully presented to the jury. The Tennessee attorney general asked the U.S. Supreme Court to lift the pause. It did, on a 6-3 vote, just before 6 p.m. CT.

That left the state with a compressed window to carry out a sentence a jury imposed three decades ago for a brutal killing. The state's interest in finishing that sentence is not in dispute in the sources. What failed was the mechanics.

Tennessee's protocol calls for a second dose of pentobarbital if the first doesn't cause death. It does not say what to do if the prisoner survives the second.

Pike's attorneys say she warned the court nine months ago that her execution would amount to cruel and unusual punishment under the Tennessee and U.S. constitutions. They have asked a Davidson County Chancery Court to order the Department of Correction to preserve records from the attempt.

Republican Gov. Bill Lee has called off all executions in the state pending a review. The review's findings, and whether the Department of Correction rewrites its protocol to cover a survived second dose, will determine when Tennessee can carry out another sentence. Pike's own legal status also remains unresolved, including whether the state can try again.