Christa Pike's lawyer gives update on death row inmate

Death row inmate Christa Pike remains "critically ill" following a failed execution attempt in Tennessee, one of her lawyers has said.

The convicted murderer was given two doses of pentobarbital, a lethal drug used by the US state in executions, on Wednesday.

However, in a court filing, Pike's legal team said problems with the IV lines caused the barbiturate pentobarbital to go into her body, instead of her bloodstream.

The 50-year-old remains unconscious and on a ventilator as doctors attempt to get the doses of the drug out of her system.

Asked on CNN's State of the Union for an update on her condition, assistant federal defender Stephen Ferrell, Pike's lawyer, said: "It remains the same. She's still in the hospital on a ventilator, critically ill.

"We don't really know the prognosis yet, and may not know for several days."

Asked whether she ever regained consciousness after the execution attempt, Mr Ferrell added: "Not that I am aware of."

Mr Ferrell does not know what Tennessee's attorney general's office will do next.

"We don't know what the prognosis is, as in the long-term prognosis... she may not fully recover," he said.

"We just don't know any of this. We have had no discussions about this [what happens next]. The Tennessee attorney general's office, so far, has not given us any indications of what their intentions will be."

Mr Ferrell believes that the state should commute her sentence.

"At the very least the governor should commute Ms Pike death sentence to a life sentence," he said.

"We don't know what her physical state will be, but it's clear that she has endured a tortuous attempt at executing her, and we had already asked that the governor commute her for many good reasons."

Pike's lawyers have said that her arms were "swollen, burned, and blistered" from the caustic pentobarbital administered during the attempted execution.

Little has been released about Pike's condition in the days since the attempted execution, and Mr Ferrell said that his client had given someone her medical power of attorney, adding that that person is protecting her privacy.

A spokeswoman for Pike's defence team said in a statement early Sunday that "we appreciate all respect for Christa's rightful privacy".

Pike and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, were convicted of torturing and killing Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old classmate of theirs, at a job training facility in the city of Knoxville in 1995.

Prosecutors said Pike, who was 18 at the time, feared she was trying to steal her boyfriend, and lured her to a wooded area.

A pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satanism, was carved on the victim's body, which, along with other elements of the crime, stoked fears of Satan worship during the so-called "satanic panic" in the country during the 1980s and 1990s.

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Shipp, who was 17 when the crime was committed, received a life sentence with the possibility of ​parole.

Pike does not deny the killing, but her supporters have argued the state should consider her age at the time, mental illness and a history of severe sexual abuse, including rape, beginning when she was a child.

Meanwhile, Frank Strada, commissioner of Tennessee's Department of Correction, will step down this month while an independent review determines what happened, state governor Bill Lee said on Saturday.

(c) Sky News 2026: Christa Pike's lawyer gives update on death row inmate