The execution was meant to end her life—not leave her fate hanging in a hospital room. Christa Pike’s lawyers say a failed lethal injection left her unconscious and critically ill, with troubling questions about what happened inside Tennessee’s execution chamber. Now they want clemency, while the account describes an independent review and a deeply uncertain future that remains terr…

According to the supplied report, Pike, 50, remained on a ventilator four days after receiving two doses of pentobarbital during an attempted execution. Her attorneys alleged that intravenous problems allowed the drug to enter surrounding tissue, leaving her arms swollen, burned and blistered. Defense medical expert Dr. Joel Zivot said leakage could explain those injuries. Attorney Stephen Ferrell said her long-term prognosis was unknown and urged Governor Bill Lee to replace her death sentence with life imprisonment.

Pike was convicted of torturing and killing 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville in 1995, when Pike was 18. Her supporters have cited her youth, mental illness and childhood abuse in seeking clemency. The report also describes an independent review into the execution attempt and says corrections commissioner Frank Strada is stepping down. What happens next remains unresolved: her lawyers said authorities had not indicated their intentions, while doctors continued treating her critical condition.