Judge rules evidence from Christa Pike's botched execution be preserved

Judge rules evidence from Christa Pike's botched execution must be preserved In short: A US judge has ordered the Tennessee Department of Correction to preserve all evidence related to the botched execution of Christa Pike. The 50-year-old has been on death row since being convicted of the murder of classmate Colleen Slemmer in 1996. The failed execution has renewed scrutiny of how US states carry out the death penalty, in particular the use of lethal injection. A judge in the US state of Tennessee has ordered authorities to preserve evidence related to the botched execution of convicted killer Christa Pike. The 50-year-old's lawyers filed an emergency court motion after Pike survived two doses of a lethal injection drug last week. She had been sentenced to death for the murder of a classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in 1996, a crime committed when she was 18 years old. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, she is the first person to survive the administration of lethal injection drugs in the US. He attorney, Luke Ihnen, told the court on Wednesday, local time, Pike was "speaking limitedly". At the hearing in Nashville, Mr Ihnen asked the court to order the Tennessee Department of Correction to save evidence in the case and provide more information about what went wrong. The judge ordered the state to preserve "anything that was in the actual room". "Part of the issue that we are facing is up until yesterday, our client was unconscious, unable to communicate with counsel, unable to communicate with medical providers, and without her consent" a new lawsuit cannot be filed, Mr Ihnen told the court. Her legal team said that Pike's prognosis remained unclear and, at a minimum, she faced a lengthy recovery. Her arms were burned and blistered after the attempted lethal injection and she was handcuffed to a hospital bed, they said. Pike's attorneys wanted the court order to require the prison system to preserve information from the attempted execution, including drug lot numbers, needles, execution logs and other information. Chancery Court Judge I'Ashea Myles indicated that her order to save the evidence would be sweeping, saying the state should maintain recordings, witness accounts and emails along with drugs, syringes, IV lines and other medical items. The Tennessee Attorney General's Office said a court order was unnecessary. Assistant Attorney General John W Ayers said evidence from the death chamber had already been collected and logged. Governor Bill Lee, a Republican, has called what happened "deeply disturbing" and ordered a "comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred". The governor postponed the state's only other execution scheduled for this year. Tennessee's prison chief resigned in the wake of the failed execution, which has renewed scrutiny of how states carry out the death penalty, in particular the use of lethal injection. Christa Pike's recovery remains uncertain Medical and lethal injection experts have focused on the possibility that a problem with the IV line caused the drug to pool in Pike's tissue rather than entering her bloodstream. Pike's lawyers wrote in their court filing that "apparently at no point did any member of the execution team realise that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had blown". The attempted execution got underway around 7:30pm on September 30, when Pike was given a chance to make a final statement. About five minutes later, Pike raised her head and said her arm was hurting. At some point she appeared to lose consciousness, but she could be heard audibly breathing until media were escorted from the witness room at 8:53pm. An ambulance arrived at the prison at 9:14pm to take Pike to a hospital. Doctor Joel Zivot, a professor of anaesthesiology and surgery in Atlanta who consulted as an expert for Pike's legal team, said it could be weeks or months before anyone knew exactly what her recovery might look like, and whether her competency could be restored so the state could try again to execute her. AP/ABC