Christa Pike's alternative request for last meal revealed as prison chief to resign after failed execution

Just $20 was set aside for Christa Pike's last meal, and she turned it down.

Instead, the death row inmate asked for the money to be spent on pizza for homeless people in downtown Nashville, according to the New York Times.

That request came before two lethal injections of pentobarbital failed to kill the 49-year-old on Wednesday.

Pike was left unconscious and on a ventilator, and she remains in critical condition at a hospital in the Nashville area.

The fallout has now reached the top of the state's prison system. Frank Strada, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Correction, is set to resign over the failed execution attempt.

He said stepping aside was ‘in the best interests’ of Tennessee, and described the investigation into the procedure as ‘entirely appropriate and necessary’.

Christa Pike, 49, was left unconscious and on a ventilator after two lethal injections of pentobarbital failed to kill her on Wednesday. (Tennessee Department of Correction)

What happened during Christa Pike's failed execution?

Pike's lawyers said she was given two sets of syringes containing the lethal drug while she cried and whimpered throughout the procedure.

At one point, she said: "My arm feels like it's about to burst open." She later asked: "Does this happen like that?"

She was reportedly stuck with at least seven needles as medical staff struggled to administer the drug. Attorney Randy Spivey said on Thursday: "I counted at least seven needles used in her left arm alone."

He added that one needle ‘appeared to be bent when it was pulled from her left arm after an unsuccessful attempt’.

Her lawyers also said her arms were left burned, blistered and swollen by the repeated attempts to insert needles.

They believe problems with the IV lines meant the pentobarbital entered her body rather than flowing into her bloodstream.

They also claim nobody realized the lines had been incorrectly placed, or that her veins had blown, while the lethal drug was being administered.

Hospital workers then battled to save her life and clear the drug from her system, with Pike intubated and hooked up to a ventilator. Her lawyers are now fighting to have her death sentence commuted.

Colleen Slemmer was 19 when she was killed in Knoxville in 1995, and Pike and Tadaryl Shipp were convicted of her murder. (WTLV)

Who is Christa Pike and why was she on death row?

Pike has spent three decades on death row for the 1995 murder of her 18-year-old college classmate, Colleen Slemmer.

She was sentenced to death in 1996, the year after the killing, having been found guilty of murdering Slemmer, whom she believed was trying to steal her boyfriend.

Had the execution gone to plan, Pike would have become the first woman put to death in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

For now, Pike remains critically ill while her legal team pursues a commutation, and the department that carried out the procedure is preparing to lose its commissioner.