Christa Pike on life support is the mother of all ironies

I'm sure everyone has heard about the "failed execution" of Christa Pike in Tennessee this last week. 

Incidentally, "failed execution" is different from "botched execution". In a "botched execution", something went wrong with the lethal injection procedure, but the person died regardless. This apparently happens as often as 8% of the time, which seems extraordinary to me. In a "failed execution", on the other hand, the person does not even die, a much rarer event but far from unprecedented, as some news outlets are suggesting (this is the second time this year it has happened in Tennessee alone). 

Christa Pike is very much alive as we speak, although in a pretty bad way, unconscious and intubated on a ventilator to keep her alive. She survived two doses of a lethal pentabarbitol injection, the capital punishment method of choice in Tennessee and a few other US states. It's not entirely clear why the lethal injection failed, but some commentators suggest that her vein may have burst (twice!) and the pentabarbitol spilled out into the surrounding tissues (she complained of a burning sensation at one point, which supports this theory).

If one attempt fails, a second is called for. There is, however, no protocol on what to do if the second attempt also fails, as in this case. So, a very ill Ms. Pike was summarily whisked out of there and away from the press, and is currently being maintained on life support at an off-site medical facility.

The fact that she is now receiving "life-saving medical care" has to be the mother of all ironies. Ms. Pike's lawyer is calling her treatment "chemical torture", and is calling for her death sentence to be commuted. Her conviction of killing a classmate 32 years ago, at the age of 18, was controversial in the first place, partly because of her age at the time of the crime, and partly because of her history of severe childhood abuse.