Pike’s team says they predicted complications with her execution

It’s still unclear how Christa Pike survived two lethal doses of pentobarbital on Wednesday night. But her legal team had warned about potential complications.

One of Pike’s attorneys, Stephen Ferrell, said medical experts testified that an IV line in Pike’s vein would likely be unstable.

“If the setting of the intravenous either became dislodged or pierced all the way through the vein such that the liquids were being deposited on the other side, it sounds like that is likely to have occurred and so that the lethal injection drugs were not going directly into the bloodstream, but were rather ending up in her arm,” Ferrell said.

Pike’s legal team argued before a special investigator this summer that several of Pike’s health conditions, including a blood disorder, could make her lethal injection painful and difficult. Ultimately, the state’s supreme court said that was speculation, and the concern didn’t amount to a rights violation.

Follow for updates: Tennessee’s botched execution of Christa Pike

Secrecy still shrouds what happened 

The state’s lethal injection process has long been shielded from public view, despite a lawsuit from local media, including WPLN, to get the information.

WPLN’s media witness at the attempted execution observed that it took a long time to establish IV access and that Pike was still talking and conscious when she should have appeared comatose. Corrections officials did not answer media witnesses’ questions even as it became clear that things were not going as planned.

Another of Pike’s attorneys, Randy Spivey said he counted at least seven needles going into one of her arms, including one that he said appeared bent when it was removed.

As of Friday morning, Pike’s attorneys said she is still alive, in critical condition and receiving life-saving medical care. Her legal team is seeking a commutation of her death sentence. Pike was to be put to death for her part in the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer when they were both teens.

“This is not about whether Christa has been punished or punished enough,” Spivey said in an interview with NPR. “It’s about torture. And we should all care about whether we’re willing to torture someone. And it’s not just Christa, like her main concern throughout the day as it dragged on and on was the effect that this was having on the victim’s family.”

“Everyone was tortured on Wednesday, and that should never happen again,” Spivey said.