Christa Pike on a ventilator and unconscious after failed Tennessee execution, attorneys say

Christa Pike was placed on a ventilator and remained unconscious in a hospital in the hours after her failed execution in Tennessee, her attorneys said in a court filing Friday.

Hospital staff, her lawyers said, were working to save Pike's life and as of late Thursday were trying to clear the two doses of the drug that the state uses to execute prisoners.

The stunning failure in Tennessee's execution chamber on Wednesday has left both sides of the death penalty debate demanding answers. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has ordered an independent review.

The court filing offered the first detailed account of Pike's condition after an ambulance carried her away from Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Wednesday night. Her attorneys said a day earlier that she was in critical condition.

Pike's attorneys said they believed problems with the IV lines caused the pentobarbital to flow into her body instead of her bloodstream.

"Apparently at no point did any member of the execution team realize that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had blown and that the pentobarbital was, in whole or in part, entering Ms. Pike's body," they wrote in the court filing.

Instead of "remedying this failure," they prepared and administered a second dose of pentobarbital, her lawyers said.

State officials have not offered any explanations about what went wrong.

Lee demanded a review of the execution procedures and indefinitely postponed Pike's execution and another that had been scheduled for this year. Republican Tennessee lawmakers said the state should review whether to stop single-drug lethal injections and consider other options to carry out death sentences.

The execution team worked for an hour to administer the lethal drugs, said Pike's defense lawyer Randy Spivey, who counted at least seven needles in her left arm.