{"id":790406,"date":"2026-10-03T06:16:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T06:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/790406\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T06:16:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T06:16:11","slug":"christa-pike-unconscious-on-ventilator-after-botched-execution-lawyers-death-penalty-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/790406\/","title":{"rendered":"Christa Pike unconscious, on ventilator after botched execution: Lawyers | Death Penalty News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"article__subhead\">The Tennessee woman\u2019s legal team says doctors are working to clear doses of the drug pentobarbital from her system.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"avatar\" tabindex=\"-1\" aria-hidden=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/author\/al_jazeera_staff_150119130629458\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791008171_196_2017-06-08T131939Z_1189275883_RC11B0FE7F20_RTRMADP_3_GULF-QATAR-JAZEERA-1714943623.jpg\"   aria-hidden=\"true\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Published On 2 Oct 20262 Oct 2026<\/p>\n<p>Christa Pike has been placed on a ventilator and intubated after surviving a failed execution attempt, according to a court filing from her lawyers.<\/p>\n<p>The Tennessee woman, they wrote on Friday, \u201cremains critically ill\u201d and is unconscious while receiving treatment at a hospital in Nashville.<\/p>\n<p>Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n<p>According to the filing, medical staff are working to save Pike\u2019s life and clear her system of the two doses of the drug pentobarbital, which the US state uses to execute prisoners.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUpon arrival, both of her arms were swollen, burned, and blistered,\u201d Pike\u2019s lawyers wrote about the drug\u2019s effects on her body.<\/p>\n<p>The filing, which was part of an emergency request by Pike\u2019s lawyers to preserve state records related to her execution, marks the most detailed update on Pike\u2019s condition after she was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2026\/10\/1\/christa-pike-execution-fails-what-next-when-a-lethal-injection-is-botched\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">transported<\/a> by ambulance to hospital from a Tennessee prison on Wednesday, following the botched attempt.<\/p>\n<p>Pike\u2019s lawyers argued that problems with the IV lines caused the pentobarbital to flow into her body instead of her bloodstream.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cApparently at no point did any member of the execution team realise that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had blown and that the pentobarbital was, in whole or in part, entering Ms Pike\u2019s body,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n<p>The lawyers allege prison staff prepared \u201ca backup set of syringes\u201d and \u201cadministered another lethal dose of pentobarbital\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Pike, who was sentenced to death at 18 after she was found guilty of torturing and murdering another young woman in 1995, would have been the first woman in more than 200 years to be executed in Tennessee. She was also the only woman on the state\u2019s death row.<\/p>\n<p>Pike\u2019s lawyers have called for her sentence to be commuted to life in prison after she endured what they called \u201cchemical torture\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Tennessee\u2019s Governor Bill Lee has suspended all executions for the rest of the year while the state investigates what happened.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tennessee woman\u2019s legal team says doctors are working to clear doses of the drug pentobarbital from her&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":790407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[176380,49,937,50,63512,51,47,52,48,158,3544],"class_list":["post-790406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-death-penalty","tag-headlines","tag-human-rights","tag-news","tag-prison","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=790406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}