US death row inmate Christa Pike conscious after failed execution, lawyers say
Pike, 50, continues to receive critical medical care while handcuffed in hospital, according to a statement from her lawyers on Tuesday.
US death row inmate Christa Pike is “conscious and speaking” after a failed execution attempt, her lawyers said.
Pike, 50, is still receiving critical medical treatment while handcuffed in a hospital, according to a statement from her attorneys on Tuesday.
She was sentenced to death after being convicted of murdering Colleen Slemmer in 1995. Pike survived two lethal injections last week and was then moved to a hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, for treatment.
In the days after the attempt, her lawyers said she was unconscious while medical staff worked to clear pentobarbitol from her body after the failed execution.
On Tuesday, Pike’s lawyers said her recovery is “medically unprecedented” and that, although her prognosis is still uncertain, “at a minimum, we expect a long recovery”.
They said she is the only person known to have survived a completed execution attempt in the US.
Authorities have not said whether they will try again to execute Pike, and they have not explained what went wrong.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has suspended all executions for the rest of the year, and the state’s prisons chief said over the weekend that he intends to resign.
Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and killed 19-year-old Slemmer, whom they had met at a job training camp for troubled teens.