Christa Pike was injected with seven needles during botched execution

Christa Pike’s lawyers revealed she is alive but in critical condition following her failed lethal injections, and they have demanded the governor commute her sentence.

Pike, 50, is receiving lifesaving care after she was injected with at least seven needles during her botched execution overnight in Nashville, Tennessee, her lawyers announced at a press conference on Thursday.

The killer had been on death row for 30 years since she was convicted of the 1995 murder of her Knoxville Jobs Corp classmate Colleen Slemmer.

‘Christa is alive. We don’t have much of a sense of her prognosis or an update on her health,’ Randy Spivey, with the Tennessee Office of the Post Conviction Defender, said. He added that Pike is covered in blisters and burning near the injection area.

Spivey described the gory ordeal at the prison last night. Pike was injected with multiple needles in a bid to get the deadly fluid to work – including one syringe that was bent as it was pulled from her arm.

Pike was singing and blessing those people in the spectators’ room after she had received the first dose that should have killed her, her attorney said.

At one point, the killer was allegedly thanking the medical team injecting her with pentobarbital and offered to direct them to try a vein near her shoulder.

Pike’s spiritual advisor was in the death chamber with her, but he was removed at points, according to the attorney who cited the cruel and torturous nature of the night.

Christa Pike is in critical condition and receiving lifesaving care after she was injected with at least seven needles during her botched execution, her lawyers say

Pike’s attorney Randy Spivey claimed she was injected with seven needles, including one that was bent as it was pulled from her arm

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Spivey said on Thursday: ‘Last night was not just inefficient. It was cruel, and it was torturous. It was also predictable.

‘[Pike] was not just cooperative, but was trying to help instruct the people placing the IV lines.

‘She over and over again said, “Please try up on my shoulder higher. Please try here, I think it will be okay.”‘

Pike was still alive Wednesday night after she was administered two syringes of pentobarbital at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

Officials raised the curtains to the execution chamber at 7.27pm on Wednesday, showing Pike strapped to a gurney.

‘I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life, and that is in love,’ the killer said in her ‘last’ words. She described herself as at peace.

But Pike remained awake and at one point raised her head and asked prison officials if her arm was supposed to feel that way. It was unclear what she meant.

By 8.26pm, execution witnesses reported that the second dose of pentobarbital had been administered.

Pike snored behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at 8.53pm. Witnesses were then escorted out of the area.

She was then rushed to a hospital by an ambulance, her attorneys said.

Her lawyers claimed that during the botched execution, communication with Pike was difficult for 40 minutes after the first dose was administered.

Pike allegedly tried to help the medical professionals as they administered the drugs, thanked them and sang in the room

Pike had been on death row for 30 years since she was convicted of the 1995 murder of her Knoxville Jobs Corp classmate Colleen Slemmer (pictured)

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‘I had no idea when or if medical professionals began to assist Christa,’ Spivey said.

He said it took seven minutes and six locked doors for him to communicate with his legal team.

‘I did not get any information or confirmation that an ambulance was on its way until 8.50,’ Spivey said.

Her lawyers expect another update on her condition within the next 24 hours.

The attorneys have called on Governor Bill Lee to commute her sentence and said they hope Pike pulls through so they can discuss her next steps.

‘We want to think this through, and we want to make sure that Christa recovers and has some input in what she wants,’ said Stephen Ferrell with the Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee.