Court Documents Say Execution Team Struggled With IV Lines Before Christa Pike’s Botched Tennessee Execution

IV failures in Tennessee

Court documents described execution team members struggling to establish working IV lines in Christa Pike’s arms before her attempted execution in Tennessee, with the team allegedly warning that her lethal execution IV may have ruptured her veins. Randy Spivey, Pike’s attorney, wrote that the IV team went through about 10 needles and tried several IV sites on both arms, and he said the team even struggled to push saline through the last IV site they established. The documents said Pike, 50, was hospitalised after surviving two doses of pentobarbital as the state tried to execute her on September 30 for the 1995 stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer.

The filing said the execution team began trying to place the two IVs required by Tennessee’s execution protocols at 6.34pm, and it took nearly an hour to complete the same process in her left arm after setting an IV in her right arm within about six minutes. Spivey wrote that Pike was “wincing and grimacing” as the IV team members moved the needles around inside her left arm, and he said one team member told the group a vein “might be blowing” at 6.57pm while examining an IV in her left arm.

Reporting for this sectionNine.au

“Either blood or blown”

Spivey wrote that one team member said, “it’s either blood or blown, I need to know,” as the IV team assessed Pike’s left arm during the nearly hour-long effort.

Spivey also wrote that he recalled a team member saying “I think it’s blown” at 7.07pm, and he said the team later decided at 7.13pm that it had successfully placed an IV in Pike’s left arm.

Pike told her attorney that at 7.34pm, “I feel like my arm is about to bust. It burns,” according to the court document account.

Spivey wrote that Pike continued to talk to her spiritual adviser for the next 10 minutes before she began making an “agitated snoring sound,” and he said over the next 30 minutes she strained, flinched, moved her head and seemed to struggle to breathe.

The filing described a series of phone calls to the execution chamber beginning about five minutes later, and Spivey said he was led on a circuitous, seven-minute route through the facility instead of being allowed to use the phone in the execution.

Reporting for this sectionNine.au

Religious opposition to capital punishment

Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City said a proposed and later canceled livestream of a military execution and the botched execution of Tennessee inmate Christa Pike should prompt “renewed courage and determination” to end capital punishment.

Coakley made the remarks in an address to death penalty opponents gathered at the apostolic nunciature in Washington for the biennial Justice Reimagined Awards and Celebration, and OSV News said the event was hosted by Catholic Mobilizing Network.

Coakley referenced “the things that have been in the news of late” and said he hoped “we’ll all find renewed courage and determination to continue this fight to advocate for the sanctity, the dignity of every human life from conception to its natural end.”

Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network, said Coakley’s “voice was critical when speaking out against the Trump resumption of federal executions, and when Secretary Hegseth just recently called for livestreaming executions.”

The OSV News report said Catholic Mobilizing Network presented Archbishop Coakley with its Archbishop Joseph A. Fiorenza Dignity & Life Award, and it said a message from Vatican secretary of state Archbishop Gabriele G. Caccia was read at the event from Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state.

Reporting for this sectionOSV News