Christa Pike remains unconscious on ventilator after failed Tennessee execution

Christa Pike was still unconscious and breathing with the help of a machine as of late Thursday, according to a court filing by her attorneys reported by The Guardian. The filing said hospital staff were working to save Pike's life and to clear the drug pentobarbital from her system. She remained hospitalized following the state of Tennessee's unsuccessful attempt to put her to death on Wednesday.

Pike received two doses of pentobarbital during the failed execution. Her attorneys said in the filing that they believed problems with intravenous lines caused the drug to enter her body rather than her bloodstream. In their account, no member of the execution team appeared to notice that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had failed.

The attorneys wrote that rather than addressing the problem, the execution team went on to prepare and administer a backup set of pentobarbital syringes. The filing lays out the sequence as Pike's legal team understands it, and the state's account of the procedure was not included in the report.

Pike, 50, was sentenced to death in 1996, when she was 20 years old, in connection with the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Pike and her then boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, killed Slemmer at a job training camp in Knoxville, Tennessee. A satanic symbol had been carved into Slemmer's chest, a detail that drew widespread attention to the case.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Tennessee last executed a woman in 1820, meaning Pike would have become the first woman put to death in the state in more than 200 years. Her execution instead became the latest high-profile failure in a US lethal injection, prompting top lawyers, doctors and members of the faith community to call for a moratorium on the death penalty.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.