‘Either blood or blown’: graphic details of botched US execution revealed

Tennessee execution team members failed multiple times to establish working IV lines in Christa Pike’s arms before her attempted execution and warned that some of her veins may have ruptured, or “blown”, before she was injected with the lethal drug, her lawyer wrote in a court document filed Thursday.

The IV team went through about 10 needles and tried several IV sites on both arms, lawyer Randy Spivey wrote in the document, which provides the most detailed account of the execution attempt so far. They even struggled to push saline through the last IV site they established, Spivey wrote.

Pike, 50, was hospitalised after surviving two doses of pentobarbital as the state tried to execute her on September 30 for the 1995 stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer. She was 18 when she tortured and killed Slemmer with her boyfriend, becoming one of the youngest women to be sentenced to death.