Krista Pike, who was convicted of murder, remains unconscious, intubated, and on mechanical ventilation following the failed attempt by Tennessee authorities to execute her, as her attorneys stated on Friday, providing for the first time a detailed account of the extent of the damage she sustained during the lethal injection procedure.
Medical staff are working to save her life and remove pentobarbital from her system, the drug administered to her for the execution, her attorneys stated in an emergency court petition. In the petition, they are seeking to compel the Tennessee Department of Corrections to preserve all evidence related to the failed attempt to execute her on Wednesday night.
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Paike remains in critical condition two days after authorities administered two doses of pentobarbital, which did not result in her death. According to her lawyers, she has also sustained serious injuries to both hands.
“At no point did did any member of the execution team realize that the intravenous lines had not been properly placed or that the veins had been damaged, and that the pentobarbital, in whole or in part, was being administered into Ms. Pike’s body outside the intended intravenous route,” her attorneys stated in a document filed with the Chancery Court of the 20th Judicial District of Tennessee.
This appeal provides the most complete picture to date of the medical consequences of the failed attempt to execute her, which Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, claimed was carried out in accordance with the state’s established protocol.
This is the second failed execution in Tennessee in 2026. Following the incident, Lee suspended all remaining executions in the state for the rest of the year and ordered an independent investigation to determine exactly what happened.
Paike’s lawyers have argued that the difficulties the execution team faced in administering the drug were related to intravenous access, an issue about which, they emphasize, they had warned both the state and the courts prior to the execution.
Krista Pike, 50, was convicted of the 1995 murder of her 19-year-old college classmate, Colleen Schlemmer, when she herself was 18 years old, and would have been the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries.
Source: Proto Thema
