Christa Pike, who survived two doses of a lethal injection drug last week during a botched execution in Tennessee, is conscious and speaking, her lawyers said in a statement on Tuesday.
Ms. Pike continues to receive critical medical care at a Nashville hospital, the lawyers said. The prognosis remains unclear, they said, but they expect a long recovery.
“Christa is a survivor and will take recovery one day at a time,” the lawyers said.
Ms. Pike, 50, is believed to be the first person to have survived doses of a lethal injection drug. She has been hospitalized since the execution attempt on Sept. 30, after it became clear to witnesses that she was still breathing after two doses of pentobarbital, the drug used in lethal injection executions.
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The drug protocol was a massive single dose of pentobarbital, which is a barbiturate. Followed by a second backup dose of the same size if required.
This is a different and simpler protocol than the 3 drug combo of, like, midazolam, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride. The barbiturates work solely off of sedative-like effects, and lethality is achieved by using a massive overdose.
This is what I’ve pieced together from news and court filings:
This drug works well if it gets into the blood stream. If it goes into the muscles and other parts of the body besides the veins, it doesn’t have its psychoactive sedative effects. The drug is very basic, as in high pH, so it causes burns.
Injecting not into vein also causes pain and swelling simply from mechanically forcing a largish volume of liquid into the body where there’s not a lot of free space to accept it.
So the story seems to be that the execution people struggled for a long time to get a good needle stick into a vein. The victim had prewarned them and the court that she has tiny veins, like a lot of people. It seems like they possibly gave up on the vein and just dumped two whole vials into what was effectively an intramuscular injection.
There was a witness report that one of the multiple needles that was removed from her arm was bent at a 90 degree angle.