The Guardian reported that the Tennessee execution team tasked with setting an intravenous line in the arms of death row prisoner Christa Pike repeatedly warned that her vein might be “blowing” before the team went ahead with the procedure. The account is a new one from Pike's lawyer, according to The Guardian.
According to The Guardian, the account suggests the team was racked by doubts even before the pentobarbital began to flow. The line was the means through which Pike could be injected with a lethal dose of the drug, the outlet reported. The warnings, as the outlet described them, came before the procedure went ahead.
The Guardian's summary attributes the new account to Pike's lawyer but does not name that lawyer in the material available for this story. The article's byline credits Ed Pilkington, who is listed as writing in New York.
Pike is a death row prisoner in Tennessee. The procedure at issue was the placement of the intravenous line that would carry the drug, according to the report's summary.
The summary is cut off before it gives further detail on what team members said, how the procedure unfolded after the warnings, or how the execution ended. The outlet's headline does, however, describe the execution as failed, and those further details are not included in this report.
This story rests on a single report from The Guardian. The material provided for it includes no response from Tennessee state officials, and the account it describes has not been confirmed by any other source in that material.
Sources: The Guardian: Christa Pike’s IV team warned vein might be ‘blowing’ before failed execution.