The doctor who supervised Christa Pike’s botched execution—and had led another failed lethal injection just months earlier—had not placed an IV line in 13 years, according to court records.
Dr. Mark Fowler, appointed by the Tennessee Department of Corrections, oversaw the unsuccessful executions of death-row inmates Tony Carruthers and Pike this year.
But Fowler, 69, acknowledged in a deposition last year that he held no hospital privileges and was not authorized to insert a central IV line at any medical facility, PEOPLE reported, citing the deposition.
He said he last held those privileges in 2013 and had not placed an IV in a patient since then.
Based on Fowler’s testimony, he lacked the recent experience and training typically required to obtain or maintain privileges for placing central lines at many, if not most, major hospitals, Dr. Gail A. Van Norman, professor emeritus of anesthesiology and pain medicine at the University of Washington, wrote in a declaration obtained by the publication.
Despite that, Tennessee assigned Fowler to oversee Carruthers’ execution in May. Under the state’s Lethal Injection Execution Protocol, his responsibilities included determining whether the inmate had died and establishing a central IV line if necessary.
Fowler and a three-person medical team spent more than an hour attempting to place two IVs in Carruthers during his scheduled May 31 execution. The procedure was ultimately abandoned, according to the outlet.
After the team failed to establish the two peripheral IV sites required to administer the lethal drugs, Fowler was brought in to help, Carruthers’ attorney, Maria DeLiberto of the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote in a court filing obtained by PEOPLE.
Court documents said Fowler was unable to place a central line in either of two locations.
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By the time officials called off the execution, Carruthers was “groaning” and “clearly in pain,” DeLiberto told the court. The inmate reportedly said, “It hurts, it hurts.”
Fowler was nevertheless selected again for Pike’s disastrous lethal injection in September.
During Pike’s execution, medical staff repeatedly failed to establish functioning IV lines in her arms. They warned that some of her veins may have ruptured, or “blown,” before eventually injecting her with pentobarbital, according to a court filing from her attorney in October.
The IV team used roughly 10 needles and tried multiple locations on both arms. Staff also failed to push saline through the final IV site they placed, attorney Randy Spivey wrote.
Investigators later concluded that Pike’s IV lines had been improperly positioned, causing the pentobarbital to leak into the tissue of her arms rather than enter her bloodstream.
Fowler acknowledged that mistakes had been made, saying staff should have acted when Pike reported pain in her arm.
“They should have stopped and reassessed, and they didn’t,” he told New York Magazine in his first public comments since the execution went wrong.
After surviving two doses of the lethal drug, Pike was taken to a nearby hospital. She remained in critical condition for 10 days before being returned to the prison’s medical ward.