Court filing details Tennessee team's IV struggles in Christa Pike's failed execution

Tennessee's execution team failed repeatedly to set up working IV lines in Christa Pike's arms and warned that some of her veins may have ruptured, or "blown," before she was injected on Sept. 30, her attorney Randy Spivey wrote in a court document filed Thursday. Spivey, who was in the death chamber, described the IV team's attempts over almost an hour. The team went through about 10 needles and tried several sites on both arms, and had trouble pushing saline through the last line it established. The document gives the most detailed account so far. Pike, 50, survived two doses of pentobarbital and was hospitalized. She spent several days on a ventilator, and her attorneys at one point did not expect her to live. She regained consciousness and returned to prison. She was sentenced to death for the 1995 stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer, which she committed at 18 with her boyfriend. State protocol calls for a second dose if the first fails but does not say what to do if a person survives the second. The filing was made in a separate legal proceeding involving people on the state's death row.

The right-leaning New York Post leads with the warning the execution team received, framing it as "ominous" and "botched," and cites the needle count, the saline problem, Pike's age, the crime and Slemmer's name, the protocol gap and her hospital recovery. The left-leaning Guardian US leads instead with medical experts' reaction. It quotes Jonathan Groner, an Ohio State emeritus professor of clinical surgery, who said he was shocked and found the incompetence astounding, and it says the practices would be malpractice in any other setting. It notes four unidentified IV team members. Both rely on Spivey's account. The Post stresses the crime and the process, while the Guardian stresses outside expert judgment. Straight Arrow News emphasizes the team's doubts about the lines before the injection.