Christa Pike is conscious and speaking from hospital after surviving a failed execution attempt in Tennessee, her attorneys have said. She remains in critical care, with her prognosis unclear and a lengthy recovery expected.
Pike was given two lethal doses of pentobarbital at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on 30 September. The execution was abandoned after officials determined that she had not lost consciousness and still had a heartbeat.
Media witnesses said Pike could be heard loudly snoring about an hour after the procedure began. She was later taken by ambulance to hospital, where she has remained.
In a statement, her legal team said she was “conscious, speaking, and continues to receive critical medical care”. The attorneys added that, despite severe damage to her arms, she remained handcuffed and shackled to her hospital bed.
One of Pike’s lawyers, Steve Ferrell, previously said doctors were working to remove the pentobarbital from her body and that she was on a ventilator.
Attorneys seek to remove death sentence
Pike’s lawyers have filed a motion in Davidson County court seeking to preserve all evidence relating to the failed execution. They allege that the corrections team did not realise the intravenous lines had been placed incorrectly, or that the veins had ruptured, allowing the drug to enter her body only partly or not as intended.
Ferrell said the legal team wanted Pike’s sentence commuted. “The least that could happen now is that we at least take death off the table and start looking for what the future could be for her,” he said.
Pike was convicted of murdering 19-year-old former classmate Colleen Slemmer in 1995. She was 18 when the crime was committed and 20 when she was sentenced in 1996.
The execution proceeded after the US Supreme Court rejected a last-minute attempt to halt it. Pike had been due to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in about two centuries.
Following the botched execution, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee said the state’s prison chief, Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada, would resign. Mr Lee also said all other executions scheduled in the state this year had been cancelled pending a third-party review.
