Death row killer Christa Pike is likely to have suffered brain damage after Tennessee failed to execute her by lethal injection on Wednesday, warns a medical expert.After the procedure where seven needles were attached to the 50 years old’s arm to administer two doses of the poison pentobarbital – she asked whether what was happening to her was ‘normal’.According to reporters who witnessed the process held at the Tennessee Department of Corrections to have lost consciousness and begun to snore loudly.Pike was later rushed to an unnamed hospital by ambulance.
Murderer Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of her classmate Colleen Slemmer and has spent the past 30 years languishing on death row.Her execution is one of the most high profile in recent times – she is the first female to have faced execution in the state in at least 200 years and she made headlines in the past few months when she requested the firing squad instead of lethal injection and also when she refused a final meal.Now, according to her lawyer, she is being provided with ‘life saving measures’.However, Dr Joel Zivot from the Emory University School of Medicine, who is also part of Pike’s legal team, said it is likely she will be brain damaged by the toxins pumped into her veins.“It’s very possible that as a consequence of the delay of the beginning of resuscitation she will have a brain injury,” Zivot told the BBC.