A Tennessee judge ordered the state Department of Correction to preserve all evidence related to the botched execution of death-row inmate Christa Pike.
The judge instructed the state Department of Correction to maintain “anything that was in the actual room” where the execution was supposed to take place. That included waste or anything related to the lethal-injection drugs used during the failed procedure, Myles said. Judge I’Ashea Myles on Wednesday sided with a motion filed by Pike’s legal team to preserve the evidence.
Pike was sentenced to be executed last week for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. “Their word is shrouded in secrecy and legal jargon in attempts to obfuscate and obscure what really happened. The state opposed the motion from Pike’s lawyers, citing a pending independent investigation of the failed execution and an existing federal court order to preserve evidence. Pentobarbital burns upon contact, including skin, tissue and veins, they added. Her legal team has called on the governor to commute her death sentence.
She was rushed to a Nashville-area hospital where she was intubated and put on a ventilator, her lawyers said in a court filing. Hospital staff worked to clear the pentobarbital from her system, they said. “Christa, the court, the media, and the public should not simply take the state’s word about what happened last Wednesday,” Ihnen said. John Ayers, assistant attorney general in the Tennessee Attorney General’s office, said Wednesday that the state was already taking steps to preserve the evidence, even without Judge Myles’s order. Both of her arms were swollen, burned and blistered when she was admitted to the hospital, her lawyers said in the court filing.
Pike’s attorneys previously warned the court that her small veins made it likely that she would experience unnecessary suffering and terror from lethal injections.
