Christa Pike, a Tennessee death row prisoner whose execution failed last week, is now conscious and speaking, her lawyers have confirmed.
The 50-year-old inmate is still receiving critical medical treatment in hospital after surviving two attempts to execute her by lethal injection.
Pike’s attorneys said Tuesday that she had regained consciousness but remained in serious medical care. They added that she was being treated while handcuffed and shackled to her hospital bed.
Her lawyers said they expected Pike to face a lengthy recovery, while acknowledging that her overall prognosis was still unclear.
Experts describe survival as unprecedented
Pike’s case has attracted considerable attention because she appears to be the first known prisoner to survive an execution after a lethal drug was successfully injected into her body.
She was administered pentobarbital twice during the failed execution last Wednesday before being taken to hospital.
Deborah Denno, a criminologist at Fordham Law School, said the development was extraordinary.
According to Denno, there have been previous cases involving prisoners who survived attempted executions, but in those incidents execution personnel failed to establish intravenous access and therefore did not successfully inject the lethal substances.
“This has never happened before,” Denno said while discussing Pike’s case.
Steven Hale, a journalist with the Nashville Banner who witnessed the execution attempt, also said he was unaware of a comparable case.
Questions remain over failed execution
Tennessee authorities have yet to disclose what caused the execution to fail or whether Pike will face another execution attempt.
The development has already prompted changes in the state’s death-penalty procedures. Governor Bill Lee has suspended all executions in Tennessee for the rest of the year, while the state’s prison director has said he intends to resign.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of Colleen Slemmer, who was 19 at the time.
Pike and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, were accused of beating, torturing and killing Slemmer after the three met at a job-training camp for troubled teenagers.
Shipp was 17 when the killing occurred and was therefore spared a death sentence because he was legally a minor. He remains in prison.
Pike’s attorneys are due in court in Nashville on Wednesday. They also plan to address reporters outside the courthouse and have renewed their appeal for Governor Lee to commute Pike’s death sentence to life without parole.
BBC
